People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals may have a monopoly on sexualizing cuts of meat, but it takes a Czech surrealist artist to really romanticize steak. Because I am who I am, I can’t help but analyze the traditional mating rituals (and the tragic ending) on display between two cuts of beef in Jan Švankmajer’s 1988 short, Zamilované Maso, or Meat Love (via Pukeimmediately).

A run-down of their brief (and ill-fated) courtship, after the jump.

Meat 1 awakens underneath the body of Meat 2. After swiftly removing itself from the immodest position, Meat 1 rushes to the mirror to make sure it looks okay.

Meat 2 awakens with a masculine grunt. Meat 2 approaches Meat 1 from behind and slaps it in the butt. Meat 1 expresses shock, covers its naked meat body with a towel, and hangs its meat head in shame. Meat 1 is not that kind of beef. Or perhaps it is simply playing hard to get.

Meat 2 realizes it will have to invest in some more traditional courtship activities in order to woo Meat 1. Meat 2 puts on some music. It beckons Meat 1. They dance.

In a reversal of roles, Meat 1 breaks their embrace and rushes to a private plate covered in flour. Meat 1 playfully splashes Meat 2 with the white powder. They make love.

Unfortunately, this playful, flour-covered tryst has set up the two cuts perfectly for consumption. They are spiked by a large fork and sacrificed to the frying pan.

But what does it all mean? Is this meaty courtship a morality tale warning against the dangers of submitting to sexual advances? Or an uplifting testament to seizing the day before it’s too late? Which one is Juliette? Are you hungry? I am!

1. Tucker Max Fans Fight Rape With Racism, in which Photoshopping “grape drink” onto an anti-rape sign constitutes “brilliance”

2. False Rape Accusations and Rape Culture, in which rape is bad, rape accusations are bad—and attempting to prove that women are sluttier than men based on STD transmission rates is bad science, guy.

3. Tucker Max Too Sexist For Ad Space?, in which Tucker Max tells you all to go fuck yourselves.

4. The Rapiest Quotes From “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell”, in which I can’t possibly write another word about Tucker Max, even to introduce you to this blog post on Tucker Max! Sorry!

5. Dan Brown Adds Transgendering To the Lexicon, in which I read 56 words from Brown’s new book, and one make-believe word!

6. D.C. Gay Men Have Biggest Dicks, D.C. Gay Men Report, in which PENIS GRAPH.

7. Spot Your Local Tucker Max Douchebag. Collect them all!

Photo by riptheskull, Creative Commons 2.0

Last month, Tucker Max’s cross-country movie premiere tour hit Raleigh, where students from the North Carolina State Women’s Center were on hand to protest the screening. Max’s people, predictably, had some anti-feminist fun with it, and posted the video online. In the video, Max sends out his minion to interview the protesters while masquerading as a gay Duke student writing a thesis on “the linguistics of rape culture.” Of course, anyone actually interested in the linguistics of rape culture need only watch “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” to figure out what it sounds like. Basically, there are a lot of references to “cum dumpsters.”

In the Raleigh Q & A, Max himself expounded upon the rape culture issue. “Fucking rape sucks, dude,” Max said. “It’s, like, not a joke, and I feel like [the protesters'] hearts are probably in the right place, to be honest. But I fell like they’re fucking it up, man, because what they’re doing is really kind of devaluing the seriousness of an actual crime. . . . Dude, I mean, the discussion about where consent lies and doesn’t lie is an important one, and should be had, but this is not the fucking forum. And, uh, and that’s never been an issue for me, so, I don’t know man, I feel like if that’s an issue to you, that’s great, and you should pursue it, but pursue it with the people who it needs to be pursued with. And not with me.”

Of course, “where consent lies and doesn’t lie” is a consistent issue in Max’s work. Max’s stories succeed on orchestrating sexual conquests that are increasingly outrageous, drunk, dubiously legal, painful, objectifying, and embarrassing to his sex partners. In order to continue to one-up himself, Max intentionally pushes the line of consent—getting drunker, getting her drunker, leaving his sex partners to fend for themselves—naked—on the street, hiding his friend with an undisclosed video camera in his closet while they’re doing it. It’s not hard to think of the ultimate scenario these increasingly absurd sexcapades are inching toward—it’s, like, rape, dude. And now—thanks to Max’s movie tour—undergrads everywhere can compete to have the consensual sex that’s most like rape without actually being a prosecutable offense. Sure, some dudes might fail and actually rape chicks. Oh well!

In the middle of Max’s protest video, an actress from the film criticizes the protesters for failing to “read and watch any of the material!” She’s right: Max’s words are the best ammunition his protesters have, and it helps to get specific. So let’s take a look at the rape-culturiest quotations from “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell.” Shannon Johnson, the director of the NC State Women’s center which staged the Raleigh protest, has collected some highlights of the film for future protesters to use in their arguments:

On women:
- “She may be a vacuous slut with no taste, but at least she’s not a stripper.”
- “I’d rather mainline Drano than listen to another minute of your whore prattle.”
- “Your gender is hardwired for whoredom.”
- “I don’t like her because she’s a negative fucking bitch, not because she has tits.”

- “Fat girls aren’t real people.”

- “Cum dumpsters.”

On fun:

- “Ready to get shit-faced and grab some titty!?”

- “We can’t all go after the girl with low self-esteem.”

On what women are good for, beyond fucking:

- “I will gut you and grind you into pig fodder.”

- “Get away from me or I’m going to carve a fuck hole in your torso.”

- “I want to shoot every one of these bitches.”
- “The only way I can cut you deep is with a battle axe and a running start.”
- “Rape’s not funny, but murder can be.”

]]> http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/09/11/the-rapiest-quotes-from-i-hope-they-serve-beer-in-hell/feed/ 105 http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/09/09/amish-romance-novels-provide-stolen-kisses-but-not-womens-rights/ http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/09/09/amish-romance-novels-provide-stolen-kisses-but-not-womens-rights/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:13:03 +0000 Amanda Hess http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/?p=6295

Meet the hottest new women’s fiction subgenre: the Amish romance novel. Seeing as “the church has traditionally viewed fiction as distracting and deceitful,” the Wall Street Journal reports, Amish romances are largely written by non-Amish women, for non-Amish women. These so-called “bonnet books,” essentially, are romance novels for modern women who want to live vicariously through an Amish character’s modest romantic transgression against her religious community. So while the books routinely defy Amish sensibilities in plot—they generally involve “an Amish character who falls for an outsider”—they remain extremely sexually conservative.  In one popular book, Cindy Woodsmall’s “When the Heart Cries,” the forbidden couple “actually kiss a couple of times in 326 pages.”

Woodsmall’s peculiar writing technique reveals just how strange the world of non-Amish Amish fiction can be. Woodsmall researches her books with the Flauds, a family of Pennsylvania Amish farmers. Woodsmall visits the family twice yearly to generate story ideas and ask the Flauds for plot advice. Woodsmall then “mails her manuscripts to Mrs. Flaud, who, as a favor, checks them for mistakes.” Mrs. Flaud’s contributions to the books range from fact-checking—”characters riding bicycles” when “most Pennsylvania Amish ride scooters”—to suggestions for “adding or rewriting scenes.” Because Woodsmall’s books are about breaking Amish tradition from a non-Amish perspective, the Flauds aren’t always helpful:

During a recent visit, Ms. Woodsmall sat on a swing outside the Flauds’ 133-year-old farmhouse and peppered them with questions for her sequel to “The Hope of Refuge.”

“This is one of those questions I hate to ask,” said Ms. Woodsmall. One of her characters, a schoolteacher, wants to modernize some aspects of Amish education. “What are some things she might want to change?” Ms. Woodsmall asked.

The Flauds’ 13-year-old daughter, Amanda, piped up. “The bathrooms,” she said, explaining that many students at her school wanted to replace outhouses with indoor plumbing.

Some of her inquiries drew a blank. The Flauds couldn’t come up with Amish expressions for the word “quirky” or the phrase “women’s rights.”

Though the books are mainly read by “Englishers”—the non-Amish outsiders who become embroiled in the book’s forbidden love affairs—some Amish women have taken to devouring the books “under the covers.” Others, apparently, read them for informational purposes. Beth Graybill, director of the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society, keeps up on bonnet books enough to debunk their inaccurate plot lines. “Outside authors exaggerate the wild activities during Rumspringa, the period when Amish teenagers experiment with technology and worldly distractions, from about the age of 16 until they decide to join the church or leave the community, Ms. Graybill said. Buggy accidents, and romances between Amish youngsters and outsiders, are also far less common than the books suggest, she said.”

I can understand why an Amish woman might be interested to read about a woman, like her, who catches  a couple of hot smooching sessions with an exotic hunk one fateful summer. Why 250 non-Amish people recently gathered in Pennsylvania Amish country to “[snap] Ms. Woodsmall’s photo with cellphone cameras,” however, escapes me. I suppose I just don’t get hot reading a romanticized account of a community where women’s rights don’t exist. Beyond the genre’s unsettling conservative bent, the Amish romance novel strikes me as a more offensive version of the Regency romance. They both rely on sentimental ideals of antiquated societies, except that the Amish are still alive, kicking—and on-hand to inform the novelists that their buggies aren’t crash-prone and their youth actually choose to remain within the community most of the time. Plus, I’m pretty sure that Woodsmall is taking advantage of Mrs. Flaud for her free Amish editing services. Wise up, Mrs. Flaud. You could be the first Amish Amish romance writer. Think about it.

Want a taste of the Amish romance novel’s stolen kisses, tousled curls, and baby-making hotness? Here are some excerpts from novels by Woodsmall and another New York Times-bestselling Amish romance writer, Beverly Lewis.

Beverly Lewis‘ “A Cousin’s Promise“:

Wayne gave Loraine’s fingers a gentle squeeze. “This will be our last chance for an outing with our single friends before we become an old married couple, so we’d better enjoy every moment,” he whispered in her ear.

He looked at her so sweetly she wanted to tousle his thick auburn curls, the way she sometimes did when they were alone.

In just a little over a month, she and Wayne would get married, and then she could tousle his hair to her heart’s content. By this time next year, they might even have a baby, and their lives would take a new direction — one that wouldn’t include weekend trips to amusement parks. A baby would mean changing dirty diapers, getting up in the middle of the night for feedings, and so many new, exciting things. Loraine could hardly wait to make a home and raise a family with Wayne. It would be a dream come true.

She leaned her head against Wayne’s shoulder and let her eyelids close. She felt safe and secure when she was with Wayne — enjoying his company and happy to know she’d soon be his wife.

Cindy Woodsmall’s “When the Heart Cries“:

Some days the desire to break from her family’s confinements sneaked up on her. There was a life out there—one that had elbowroom—and it called to her. She took another long look at her homestead before traipsing onward. Paul would be at the end of her one-mile jaunt. Joy quickened her pace. Her journey passed rapidly as she listened to birds singing their morning songs and counted fence posts.

As she topped the hill, a baritone voice sang an unfamiliar tune. The melody was coming from the barn. She headed for the cattle gate at the back of the pastureland that was lined by the dirt road. Beyond the barn sat Paul’s grandmother’s house, and past that was the paved road used by the English in their cars.

Paul used the cars of the English. Hannah’s lips curved into a smile. More accurately, he drove a rattletrap of an old truck. Even though his order of Mennonites was very conservative, much more so than many of the other Mennonite groups, they didn’t hesitate to use electricity and vehicles. Still, his sect believed in cape dresses and prayer Kapps for the women. Surely there was nothing wrong with her caring for Paul since the Amish didn’t consider his order as being an Englischer or fancy.

As Hannah opened the cattle gate, Paul appeared in the double-wide doorway to the barn. His head was hatless, a condition frowned upon by her bishop, revealing hair the color of ripe hay glistening under the sun. His blue eyes showed up in Hannah’s dreams regularly.

Cindy Woodsmall’s “When the Morning Comes”:

Hannah gripped the railing as the train squealed and moaned, coming to a halt. Her body ached from the absence of the life she’d carried inside her only days ago. When the conductor opened the door to the outside, a cold blast of night air stole her breath. He stepped off the train with her bag in hand and turned to help her onto the platform.

“It’s bad out here tonight.” The man glanced across the empty parking lot, then passed her the traveling bag. It weighed little in spite of carrying all she owned–all she’d begin this new life with. “You got somebody meeting you, young lady?”

Wishing she had a decent answer to that question, Hannah studied her surroundings. The old depot was dark and deserted. Not one sign of life anywhere, except on the train that was about to depart. She glanced the length of the train in both directions. There wasn’t another soul getting off.

The conductor’s face wrinkled with concern. “The building stays locked 24/7. It’s no longer an operating depot, but we drop people off here anyway. When somebody lands in Alliance, they better have made plans.”

A few hundred feet to her right stood a small blue sign with a white outline of a phone on it. “I’ve got plans,” she whispered, hoping he wouldn’t ask any other questions.

BONUS: the covers are adorned with the faces of “Amish” babes:

And “Amish” hunks:

…

For two weeks, FOX 5 trained “secret cameras” on the intersection of 11th & K NW in an attempt to catch sex workers in the act. FOX 5’s investigation revealed “ladies of the night hitting the streets in broad daylight.” But while reporter Tisha Thompson’s work included the requisite indignant neighbors, official police commentary, and the money shots (sex workers adjusting their underwear), there was one thing FOX 5 couldn’t get: a comment from one single sex worker. How demeaning is this segment? Let me count the ways:

1. The anchor describes the footage of the sex workers as “unsavory” and “unnerving.”

2. That footage of sex workers? FOX 5 sets it to a sexy hip-hop beat.

3. Oh, and the most “unnerving” thing about it? These sex workers have the audacity to work during the day. Those whores belong under the cover of darkness!

3. When Thompson delivers the line, “It’s six o’clock in the morning and sharing the sidewalks with joggers, tourists and commuter buses: prostitutes,” she actually says the last part like this: “PROSTITUTES.”

4. The sex workers in the footage are almost completely blurred out—not just their faces, but in some cases, their entire bodies.

5. “Neighbors” aren’t just upset about the illegal activity—they’re also just totally grossed out by the sex workers.

“But neighbors say it’s not just the sex. They’re also frustrated by what else happens on the streets,” Thompson says. “Our camera caught one woman leaving a client’s car. She walks to a bus stop, then fixes her bra, her dress, and then does something we can’t even show you on TV, in full view of morning traffic.”

In the print version, Thompson describes the “too hot for TV” moment as “something too gross to describe.”

Let’s go to the tape:

I’m betting she’s adjusting her vagina or something, but how would I know? FOX 5 just plopped a “CENSORED” button on top of a completely blurred-out woman! I guess you can never be too safe when it comes to a sight as disgusting as a prostitute.

6. So, if even the “neighbors” are upset about this blurry woman likely adjusting her vagina in front of morning traffic, how do you think she feels? Oh, right: FOX didn’t bother to ask her.

In the backwaters of Central Florida, they call this “making a woman honest.” Or maybe it’s “making an honest woman.” Either way, Ghostface Killah is upsetting lots of people with this hip-hop interpretation of relationships, titled How To Be A Huge Dick.

What say y’all?

(Via the Awl)

MVC, pre-makeover

Until very recently, motorists traveling along Leesburg Pike in Falls Church and shoppers at MVC Late Night Video, a sex shop that sits on that road’s busiest stretch, were blissfully unaware of each other.

Thanks to thick black tint that darkened MVC’s large front windows, folks looking for the latest adult DVDs, magazines, and sex toys could browse without fear of someone they know driving by and seeing them. Drivers could chug right past the nondescript building and pretend the place was just a regular ol’ video store that happened to stay open very, very late.

But a couple of months ago, the tint came off, and all of that changed. Drive by MVC today, and you’ll see a clear window filled with mannequins dressed in lingerie, as well as rows and rows of DVDs. The store is separated from the street by a small service road, so you won’t get close enough to get a good look at the cover of, say, Team Squirt #10, but you might be able to make out the face of the person thinking about buying it.

An employee who declined to give his name says the removal of the tint was a strategic move to make the sex shop seem less shady and “more friendly to couples and women.”

“With the tint, it made it look worse than what it is,” he explains. “So, we took it off and put the lingerie up front so women drive by and can see it’s like Victoria’s Secret.”

MVC isn’t exactly like Vickie’s. The lingerie at MVC is a bit more tawdry and, well, Victoria’s Secret doesn’t sell butt plugs the size of traffic cones. But the employee insists that more women visit now that they can see the place isn’t crowded with creepy guys in trenchcoats. He says a lady friend who lives in the area and never would’ve come in before is now a regular.

Still, what about the establishment’s base—the guys who like to sneak in on their lunch break and pick up a little porn without anyone knowing?

“Some guys may have preferred it, but this isn’t a porn store that needs tinted windows, it’s a sex shop for men, women, and couples,” the employee insists.

A survey of customers at the MVC today revealed that few of them had even noticed the change to the building. Most of them grunted some form of “didn’t see it ,” so either their attentions were, understandably, not on the building’s remodel during their visit, or they just didn’t feel like chatting up some woman standing outside of their favorite sex shop holding a notebook.

Only one man, a staunch opponent of the new look, stopped to express his outrage…on his way inside.

“They’ve gotta put the tint back—people wanna keep their business on the low-low,” he says. “And you don’t want a co-worker driving by like, ‘I know that person,’ and then saying, “Hey I saw you at MVC on your lunch break!’ They gotta put the tint back.”

The anonymous employee says the store has gotten a few more community complaints than usual since the curtain came down (“Don’t you know there’s a school nearby,” is a typical one, he says), but the store’s neighboring businesses don’t really seem upset by the change.

Sam, a manager at City Diner, across the street, says the new look is “nicer.” “You can see the girls, the mannequins, with their stuff on—it’s nice, you should be able to see that,” he says. So no complaints from families who frequent his eatery and now have a pretty clear view of MVC’s interior? “No way—what’s better than sitting down and having a hamburger and seeing some nice lingerie?” he says.

That – sex once every 4.244186 days – is the good news.

The bad news is that D.C. sex is less good than in six other cities: The rate of sexual satisfaction among District dwellers is 65 percent, putting it seventh in the rankings.

Sexual frequency by city, per year:

1. Houston  101
2. Atlanta  88
3. Washington D.C.  86
4. Los Angeles  82
5. New York  80
6. Boston  79
7. Chicago  73
8. Dallas/Ft. Worth  73
9. Philadelphia  73
10. San Francisco  60

Rates of sexual satisfaction by city:

1. Atlanta  73 percent
2. New York  71
3. Houston  70
4. Dallas/Ft. Worth  67
5. Chicago  66
6. Los Angeles  66
7. Washington DC  65
8. Philadelphia  64
9. San Francisco  63
10. Boston  60

There’s been some of that going on at the National Zoo and its Virginia research facility, of course; the stork didn’t bring that baby gorilla or those clouded leopard cubs or the red panda or that endangered foal, if you know what I mean.

But let’s face it: Not everyone on four legs is getting some. Which, naturally, leads to sexual frustration. Like the kind often exhibited by dogs.

Care of the site ohmidog! comes word – and image – of the first sex toy for (male) canines: the DoggieLoverDoll.

Made out of soft rubber, it comes in the shape of a girl dog, with all the right parts, including “a silicone vagina and an easy to clean reservoir.” A press release announcing its sale by the aptly named PetSmiling, with headquarters in Miami and Sao Paolo, Brazil, explains further:

You may know or have probably heard about these dolls for men that are very popular in Sex Shops around the world. There are inflatable ones, full-body, silicone, as well as other models. So now the first doll for dogs has been launched in Brazil. That’s right, a doll for dogs to practice safe sex. The majority of non-neutered dogs spend a good chunk of time looking for something to hump. They try pillows, furry creatures, people’s legs and even other animals.

And more:

When a dog tries to hump legs, stuffed animals and other objects, he cannot reach an ejaculation. With the DoggieLoverDoll he can. Human beings have their hands to masturbate themselves, now the domestic animals, which have practically no contact with females in heat, can alleviate themselves with a toy designed specifically for them. Dogs have a great sexual appetite and this novelty, surely will better their lives.

The doll comes in three sizes – small, medium and large – because a chihuahua and a Great Dane couldn’t possibly be expected to use one with the same dimensions. During what the company calls the toy’s “testing period,” the pets “showed a better quality of life based on less anxiety, less barking and less territorial demarcation.”

Well, yeah: Isn’t that what sex does, even in humans?

The toy’s site, doggieloverdoll.com, is still being built, but check back if you’re in the market. PetSmiling says it has already received orders from the United States, Germany, and Japan.

Carolyn Zolbe, marcher in the March for Life and Arlington resident, thinks this about President Barack Obama: “I think he’s a child of God.”

Zolbe’s daughter, Grace Doherty, isn’t quite as neutral in her assessment:

“If you don’t view the value of life, how could your other views have any quality.” Zolbe, who wears a winning smile to accompany her mom-thanking sign, tells her daughter to pirouette for the camera: Doherty, for her part, wears a string of bloody baby heads dangling down her back, with a sign that says, “Some choice.”

Having noted that I am the daughter of someone, Zolbe asked for my mother’s name so that she could pray for my mother, “because she chose life.”

Many, many thousands of people have clustered on the Mall for the 36th Annual March for Life. If you’re putting on a demonstration, you, of course, must have a theme. In this department, the March for Life, well, it could use a wordsmith or two. Here it is, taken straight from the March’s Web site: “Remember—the Life Principles mean “Equal Care” with No Exceptions!” The site goes on to explain that the theme means simply that equal care must be provided to the pregnant mother and to her “preborn child.”

OK, so that’s straightened out.

Whatever the abstruse theme, the marchers at the March for Life are carrying on with messages and props that go way back. Take Chris Harmon, who hails from the rugged coal- and French-and-Indian-War-country of western Maryland–the Cumberland area, to be more precise.

Harmon has brought along a 15-foot white pole with a cluster of red balloons at the end. Symbolism, please? “It’s just the martyrs–the babies and the martyrs,” says Harmon. This is the same prop that Harmon has been bringing to this event for the past 20 years. And the effect isn’t merely symbolic. “It also looks really great on EWTN,” says Harmon, referring to the Eternal World Television Network, the Global Catholic Network.

Reporting by Amanda Hess, writing by Erik Wemple

Haha, well, let’s pretend it never happened. Instead, let us hark back to one year ago today, when Seal hit the ice, recreational photographs of Time’s Person of the Year yielded far more impressive abdominals, Rudy Giuliani was to be our next president, and a new kind of game entered our lives: “The Ungame.” Behold it!

—

If you’re like me, you can get pretty stressed out during the holiday season. Sure, social gatherings are fun, but trying to make chit-chat with all those family members, business contacts, and new acquaintances can be a real chore. Not this year. A friend of mine picked up a fun little ice-breaker at a church rummage sale that might help us out. I give you “Ungame”:

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve exhausted myself trying to facilitate polite conversation between children, gray-haired women, and mustachioed dudes in vests. Thank goodness for Ungame. Shall we play? Go on, you start. Yes, you in the vest. Pick a card:

Thanks for sharing. That was fun, non-threatening, and non-competitive. And don’t we all know a little bit more about hitchhiking now?

Hey, little one, it’s your turn. Go on:

Hmm. Well, that’s a little bit heavy, isn’t it? Why don’t we just put that card back in the deck. Maybe we’ll tackle that one later, once you find out what “suicide” means. Go on, Grandma, it’s your turn. Tell us:

That’s certainly topical. It’s alright, pick again. With Ungame, there are oodles of topics to choose from. How about this one:

I suppose there’s no harm in rehashing the will again, just to be sure. Oh, don’t feel down, Grandma. It’s just a game. Pick again:

Thanks for playing, Grandma. What do you say we pull one last card and call it a day?

I think we all learned a lot about each other today.

How did you spend your last day of 2008? Furiously racing to receive a blow job after spending the evening in da clurb with Steve Urkel? No? Well, Charles Barkley, who used to play basketball, probably ended the year in a more fantastical fashion than did you, reports the Associated Press.

Barkley was pulled over by police in the wee hours of Dec. 31, 2008 in Scottsdale, Ariz. after running a stop sign, the AP reports. But the Arizona Republic does the crack reporting the AP will not, digging up the police report to reveal Barkley’s excuse for the hurry: Oral sex, the very activity in which all the kids you know are engaged!

While being processed at the East Valley DUI Taskforce command post, Barkley told police, “I was going to drive around the corner and get” oral sex, the report states. He explained he had engaged in oral sex with the same woman last week, the report added.

He then told civilian employee, “I’ll tattoo your name on my ass” if it would get him out of the DUI, according to the report.

Yes, and Urkel is somehow involved in this!:

Barkley was returning from the Dirty Pretty Rock Bar near Camelback and Miller roads where he spent about three hours with a large group of 40 people, said owner Ryan Jocque. The party included actor Jaleel White, who played TV nerd Steve Urkel from the 1990s sitcom Family Matters, and football player Michael Strahan.

In a statement, Barley said only that the Scottsdale police were “fantastic.”

Photo via AP.

Want to get into an inaugural ball, but not interested in this guy? Or this guy? How about these guys? No? That special lady looking to feast on inaugural spoils without playing arm candy to male unknowns can instead use her thinky parts to pen an essay “of any length” about “what the inauguration means to you.” Awww!

Ten lucky winners will receive “[f]ree plane tickets for you and a guest, free hotel, plus tickets to the swearing-in ceremony for Barack Obama, the parade and one of the official balls,” reports Michael E. Ruane for the Washington Post’s “Inauguration Watch” blog.

Winners can, in turn, advertise their inaugural ball tickets on Craigslist in the hopes of securing a random stranger to invite along on the fanciest awkward social situation of the year!

Photo by by and by.

Who’s looking for inauguration week tail romance this week? A round-up!

* One 40-year-old visitor looking for a room to rent posted what looks like a perfectly reasonable ad, when viewed in your Google Reader: “Coming to the Inauguration. Looking for a room to rent close to the action. Must have nice clean condo, apartment or house. Please respond with your stats and rental rates. Would like to play a little! Let me know asap.” But click on the posting, and you will find a photo of this man’s penis, to which I will not link you! This is “men seeking men,” not “casual encounters,” good sir!

* That recently widowed “very nice man” from Old Town Alexandria is still looking for a dinner date—with the possibility of an inauguration ball follow-up. This time, the ticket-holder suggests “some wine pairing and delicious mezze/tapas” at Proof, followed by some museum-going. “Then—if you are feeling comfortable with me (which I will be attempting at all costs) perhaps we can take a quick stroll through the National Portrait Gallery across the street. It’s phenomenal!”

* This 56-year-old Takoma Park resident seeks some sober inauguration-week fun with a “partner in crime,” if not in drunkenness.

* This “in-shape landscaper” is off for the winter and heading to our fair city in January. He’s “in need or lodging (will pay) and possibly somebody to fuck around with.” Deal-breaker: He’s HIV-positive and seeking the same.

* This 28-year-old craigslister’s New Years resolution for 2009 is to “not pick up anyone from a bar.” The exceptions come fast: “St Patty Day, Cinco de Mayo, and any happy hour where its 2-4-1 Patron Tequila.” And? “Oh, and Inauguration week.

Photo by drstout.

Little girls who recently pledged their abstinence until marriage: I’ve got bad news and I’ve got good news. The bad news is that some study just came out saying those pledges don’t work. As it turns out, girls who pledge to stay chaste—even those who ensure their virginity through collectible tween-sized silvercrafts or ornate pre-prom daddy-daughter purity balls—are having sex anyway (that’s the good news).

Conservatives are up in arms about the implications this study has on the sex lives of you girls—oh no, they’re totally doing it, and not to have babies! But what of the deeper psychological compulsion this study has exposed in daddies and daughters alike: The need to pledge?

Sure, I’ve pledged. I’ve pledged plenty. And some of those pledges I’ve even kept! In high school, I put on a pair of Beer Goggles and pledged not to drink and drive to Prom in hopes of winning a raffle for a $100 Fashion Square mall gift certificate. These are the best types of pledges—ones with time limits and cash prizes.

For the most part, though, pledges will expire—usually when your life changes, rendering them irrelevant. Some pledges still last a long time: when I was in the fifth grade, I pledged never to do drugs, and I kept that pledge until I became an adult (now-ironic D.A.R.E. sweatshirt still fits!) Other pledges expire with gym memberships, or the consumption of simple carbohydrates, or when you stop being so hard on yourself, or, you know, when your wife divorces you.

So listen up, little girls: These long-term, lifelong, idealistic pledges made in adolescence (or, let’s face it, throughout adulthood) aren’t a promise—they’re a gamble. Whether or not you break a pledge has less to do with saying the words or signing the contract, and more to do with the weird, crazy, messed-up, tragic, wonderful shit that’s going to happen to you in your lifetime that you have no possible control over or way of predicting.

And yet, pledging is really kind of a fun activity, and you don’t want to feel left out when your youth group/classroom/siblings all promise never to have sex/drugs/multiple marriages ever and you have to twiddle your thumbs acting like a self-important jerk who knows so much more about life than everybody else. So instead of pledging, why not make something of your superior life knowledge, and place bets against your friend’s pledges for large sums of money? If Peggy has sex, you get to pawn her chastity ring; if Bobby snorts coke, you win the miniature telescope that represents the future career he’s throwing away; whatever. That way, you can encourage your friends to keep their promises to themselves, while you have sex and experiment with drugs when it feels right for you. Plus, you can use the money you earned from Peggy and Bobby’s broken promises to buy weed! Everybody wins!

Photo by SassyPanda.

The base of the vibrator is encircled with a stunning “eternity” band of 28 round-cut black diamonds, the perfect accompaniment to the handwritten chorus from Dave Stewart’s song.The ultimate backstage pass, the vibrator comes with a leather cord threaded through the cap so it can be worn around the neck and taken out on the town. Also on the strap is a custom guitar pick—just in case a serenade or a solo is in order

“Eternity,” coincidentally, is how long I will be haunted by the vision of former Eurythmics psych-synth mastermind Dave Stewart and his fade-tinted indoor sunglasses invading my private bedroom space. Stewart’s website says that the vibrator, made in concert with sex toy producer Jimmyjane, “comes on the heels of his launch of Rock Fabulous, a concept brand that embraces the empowerment and attitude of rock and roll” and that vibrator enthusiasts should think of Stewart’s lyrical inscription “as a semi-lucid love note, scrawled around the circumference of the vibrator.”

Knowing that this vibrator is clearly meant to be an extension of Dave Stewart’s rock God dick poses more questions than answers. How much does it cost to actually have sex with Dave Stewart, anyway? Probably a lot less than that, right? Do you think that when Dave Stewart has sex with a woman, he throws in one of those babies as a souvenir?

Image via DaveStewart.com

FUNNY
witty
outgoing
engrossing
Jewish
Italian look
great Armani dresser
poignant
plenty of social gravitas
work in the media biz
divorced
stable
attractive
engaging
compelling
big-picture personality akin to NY/Wash./SF/LA renaissance

Whew! Doozy! Now, here are your stats, lucky refined lady:

very regal
presense–laden
powerful woman
black-business-suit woman
in her late 30’s, 40’s, mid 50’s
to be my femme fatale
sleek
power-driven
co-pilot
loves and relsihes the concept of being at the big to-do with an equally compelling man that sort of “gets it”.

Sort of. So, any thoughts on who this San Francisco “media biz” gravitas-having divorcee is?

From an inspired Vancouver woman: Seeking a sexual tyrannosaur for a romp in the park - w4m

I am a very career-focused, attractive, 5′9, 120lb woman who is seeking a man who is willing to fulfill my ultimate sexual fantasy. I am an executive with a very successful corporation that keeps me very busy and I sometimes have difficulty finding men who share similar interests to my own in the bedroom.

Nothing turns me on more then Jurassic Park themed role play. You must be the animatronic dinosaur, and I must be the helpless child (Tim or Lex) stuck in the park at your mercy.

You will growl mechanically into my ear and stare threateningly. I will feign panic and search for the flash light in the back seat of the visitor jeep. You will sniff at the window slowly and then release a robotic roar into the night air. I scream for Alan Grant, but your over sized robot jaws come crashing down through the overhead window, pinning me to the floor.

I cannot stress this enough however, you must play as a ROBOTIC dinosaur. This is very specific, my interest lie entirely in animatronic dinosaurs, not real ones. I thought I should mention this as there have been unfortunate miscommunications in the past, leading to performances that have left me without an orgasm.

Other situations could include you being the dilophasaurus and spitting in my face and then going for my jugular. Or you could be the ill and moaning triceratops, and I would be Ellie Sadler, digging through your stool to find the source of the ailment. More or less any scene from the film involving a mechanical dinosaur interacting with a human will do fine.

I don’t like wasting my time, so make sure you do your homework and watch the film and make sure you can fully embrace the mindset of an animatronic dinosaur. I am an incredibly sexual person and I would make it a blockbuster night that you would never forget.

Photo by cliff1066

Here’s one I hadn’t seen before—some ” fierce, fierce dancing” by a spirited and scantily-clad fan of Beyonce’s Single Ladies video. Enjoy:

As the inauguration nears, Craigslist has been a-flutter with the romantic overtures of dudes looking for inauguration ball arm-candy and other dudes looking for inauguration week couch-surfing-with-benefits. Your best bets:

* This man-seeking-man inauguration ticket offerer has a range of interests, including “hiking, backpacking, mountain biking, snowboarding, reading, writing, cooking, dining out, watching movies, dancing, exploring the city and good conversation.” Could you be his other interest? “I tend to like younger, or at least youthful, intelligent, energetic, interesting, skinny/lean guys who look at the world differently,” he writes. Interested parties could get more than just a dance: “I’m also well-endowed and pretty damn good in bed.”

* A recent widow based in Old Town Alexandria is hungry for French cuisine—and historic dancing. “I’m thinking about meeting at the nice French Restaurant La Gaulois in Old Towne, one of my favorite places. Wine, dinner, dessert on me,” he writes. “I also have passes to inaugural balls—we can talk about—if that is something you would be interested in accompanying me to.” For those with discerning dinner date standards, this Virginian comes highly recommended. He is a “very nice man, no children, upscale professional, nice house in Old Towne, former military leadership position, great job with job security, 6′3”, well cultured and well traveled.”

* This inauguration invite is strictly local—this ticket-holder seeks “an attractive woman who would like to go with me to the ball and maybe even the inauguration itself”—as long as she keeps it in the neighborhood. “Please live in DC near GW (like FB, Dupont, Georgetown, Logan, etc),” he writes. “I have heard that traffic is going to be horrible and don’t feel like getting stood up because some bridge is closed.”

* This 48-year-old inauguration week visitor seeks three days of “clean and bug free” housing for “sleeping and rejuvenating for the next day.” Interested renters net $150—and perhaps “a little fun.”

“One of my goals will be to pass out business cards foldable but I am trying to create. www.stopthemurders.org your picture gets mine,” he writes, adding: “I am 420 friendly but cannot participate.”

* This 56-year-old unemployed Philadelphian “will pay $25.00 to you, for the privilege of sleeping on your sofa for one night, Inauguration Eve.” The remainder of the post bears repeating:

I will provide my own food, probably take out.

All I require is a sofa, some blankets, and a sink for shaving, brushing teeth, and washing up.

I am quiet, will not disturb your routine. I will read or watch tv with you.

I will be gone first thing in the morning and will not need to return to your home after that.

Having said that, I am not crazy about long distance relationships. but I can return the favor if you travel to Philly and perhaps a friendship could develop.

Any race, any age, any religion.

If required, I can provide a photo ID (uploaded to email) in advance of completing the arrangement.

Thanks.

Photo by soundfromwayout.

Well folks, it’s that time of the year again when I retire to my secret, undisclosed holiday-time punpkin’-pie sunshine bunker* for the remainder of the year. Things should get back on a regular schedule on December 29th, followed closely by another brief hiatus to allow for my first hangover of 2009. Until then, let’s reflect.

I started this blog this fall, after jumping ship from the City Paper’s arts beat to cover a subject a little closer to my area of interest—women (am one). Since then, I’ve written on contraception access, coy Internet sex fiends, and that sexy dunce ice queen who would become the Vice President of our hearts. Let’s see what subjects ya’ll found most interesting this year: in a list!

1. SEX/OBAMA: Electoral Dysfunction: In Search of Election Night Sex
2. SARAH PALIN: The Sexist’s Vice-Presidential Debate Drinking Game
3. SEX/FIRE: The Good Guys Trial
4. OBAMA: Is This Man Your Ticket to the Inauguration?
5. SEX: Nude Coworkers: Disturbing?
6. SEX/SARAH PALIN: Star in the Sarah Palin Adult Film
7. SARAH PALIN: Now: Live-Blogging the Vice-Presidential Debate
8. GAY ENDURANCE CONTESTS: High Heel Race Seeks Volunteers
9. BOOBS: Breast Cancer Awareness Cake: Fail
10. WOMEN’S HEALTH: Yes, We Have No Birth Control

Thanks very much for reading. And let me know what sexy fire boob contests you’d like to see covered in 2009!

* Phoenix.

Photo via trialsanderrors.

1. Electing President Barack Obama.

Feminist Milestone. Hawaiian beefcake president Barack Obama along with storied train enthusiast running mate Joe Biden, pinky swore that they would work to further women’s rights this election season. Despite Obama having swapped one controversial religious figure for another (this time with more misogyny!) I’m going to give Barry a pass on this one and hope that when he drops the “elect” nonsense and gets to be President for real, no take-backs, he’ll get his Lady Issues cap on straight and start pandering to us.

2. Hillary Clinton: 18 Million Cracks.

Feminist Milestone. Concession Shmussceshion. Good speech, Hills!

3. Gov. Sarah Palin: Firing Up Feminists

Thing That Happened. Remember when every feminist in America was forced to submit an op-ed piece to her local newspaper to explain why just being a woman wasn’t the same as being a feminist, but who really cares because she didn’t appear to know what any other word meant either? Yeah, that thing. Well, the same rule applies here—just because everybody got mad at the dumb lady who thought she was running for president doesn’t mean we deserve a self-congratulatory “top moment” back-pat for doing so.

4. Unmarried Women Tip 2008 Election in Favor of Barack Obama

Thing That Happened.

5. Sex and The City Movie Inspires New and Old Generations

Thing That Happened. The writer of this list saw a movie this year.

6. Bitch Magazine Forges Ahead in Fiscal Crisis

Feminist Milestone, if only to show solidarity with lady-themed print offerings. Remember me when you’re profitable!

7. Workin’ 9 to 5 Goes to Broadway

Thing That Happened. The writer of this list saw a play this year.

8. Female Bloggers Take On The Internet

9. Sex Slavery Finds A New Face Of Justice

Feminist Milestone. “This year,” Nedeau writes, “Somaly Mam was awarded the World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child in Sweden for her ‘dangerous struggle’ to defend the rights of children in Cambodia.” Wow, heh, must hurt to land after the Sex and the City movie and that Dolly Parton revival thing.

10. Female Human Rights Activist Released From Captivity

Feminist Milestone. So, Ingrid Betancourt was released after spending six years in captivity. Yeah, well, Parton had to wait 28 years to see her movie become a real live Broadway musical, so let’s keep things in perspective here.

Out of the responses that have included photographic evidence, Harris says he’s narrowed his choice down to 10 possible dates. “[Four] of them are flying in to meet with me from out of the area,” he writes. “The 6 remaining happen to be within a radius of the DC metro area give a take of 100 miles.” One submission in particular, though, has caught Harris’ eye. “I must await the return of what I think is a special person to return from Italy on the 30th,” he writes. “An Italian TV station wants to document the whole thing.”

The Italian beauty notwithstanding, women in search of Harris’ spare ticket still have a chance to get on his dance card, but he reiterates they must include a photo of themselves. “some young ladies write a 2 and 3 page thesis on themselves,” writes Harris. “However, they forgot to attach a photo.”

Photo via the U.S. Federal Government.

Despite GLOV’s many requests to meet with Mayor Fenty to address concerns about the violent attacks occurring against DC’s GLBT citizens, the Mayor has yet to respond. He did however have time Thursday to speak to Fox News about the issue saying simply, “Hate crimes, I think, are down for the most part in DC this year. We take all of them (bias crimes) seriously and look for trends.”

GLOV cites the recent Logan Circle killing of Durval Martins as evidence that hate-motivated crimes against gays have reached a critical point in the District of Columbia. GLOV’s letter to Fenty, after the jump:

Mr. Mayor:

Over the past several months, members of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual
and Transgender (GLBT) community have become increasingly concerned
with violent crime that seems to be targeting our community. Just
yesterday, a man named Durval Martins was shot to death on his way
home from visiting gay bars on the popular 17th Street strip.

GLOV (Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence) has requested on numerous
occasions through your office to meet with you, but we have been
repeatedly informed that you are not interested in a meeting at this
time. We write to ask that you reconsider. The community is nervous
and on edge, as violence around us continues to increase. We have met
with the Police, the United States Attorney’s Office, community
organizations, and members of the City Council (the City Council even
had a Hearing on Hate Crimes last Friday), but we have not heard from
our Mayor. This is not acceptable. We need to meet with you to present
our concerns personally, to hear that you understand the issues, to
learn what your plans are to address them, and to see how we can all -
city agencies, the police, the prosecutors, community
organizations, and business leaders – can work together to end the
hate-filled violence that is plaguing our community.

We would like to ask again that you convene an urgent meeting to
address these issues, and that you include the Chief of Police,
someone from the US Attorney’s Office, representatives of the City
Council, and other city and community leaders who are focused on this
issue. We need your leadership at this time, and we need to know that
you are listening.

Sincerely,

Chris Farris
Todd Metrokin
Co-Chairs, GLOV

Expert of game Roosh V seeks the help of a lucky local lady to help him practice his Spanish. “No, this is not a scheme to get laid,” he clarifies. “I won’t ask for a picture.”

Why, then, does Roosh require a lady tutor? “I prefer a female speaker because when I travel again that’s who I’ll mostly be talking to (in bars, clubs, coffee shops, etc.),” he writes.

Females also preferred because they can work for slave rations and/or unsolicited advice. “I figure we can meet in a coffee shop somewhere in DC. In exchange I can buy you whatever drink and food you want,” he writes. “I can also lend a sympathetic ear and help you solve your problems in life, if you want.”

Photo by J.P. Esperanca

Their reasoning? “Deeply held religious convictions” coupled with the belief “that the drug can act as an abortion-causing agent.”

I’m interested to see how this pans out, especially in light of Bush’s “conscience” rule, which was finalized yesterday. Illinois’ ACLU reproductive rights project director Lorie Chaiten characterizes the conflict as between “the right to free exercise of religion and the right to access reproductive health care.”

Well, if Vander Bleek and Kosirog lose, they can always open up a pharmacy in Washington, D.C.

The Bush administration today issued a sweeping new regulation that protects a broad range of health-care workers—from doctors to janitors—who refuse to participate in providing services that they believe violate their personal, moral or religious beliefs.

The controversial rule empowers federal health officials to cut off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, clinic, health plan, doctor’s office or other entity if it does not accommodate employees who exercise their “right of conscience.”

Hey, I wonder who will make the most inane comment on this inane rule? Will it be President George W. Bush? Family Research Council President Tony Perkins? Does Sarah Palin have anything to say about this?

No, okay, let’s settle on Assistant Secretary of Health Joxel Garcia! “Many health-care providers routinely face pressure to change their medical practice—often in direct opposition to their personal convictions,” Garcia said.

Don’t you just hate it when the government comes a-knockin’ at your federally funded business which has been operating PERFECTLY WELL THANK YOU and says you change like EVERYTHING AROUND just to accommodate the constitutional rights of other people? Next they’ll be saying that bus drivers “have” to let black people ride in the front, or that poll workers “have” to let women vote. Thank you President Bush for protecting MY right to use American taxpayer’s money to deny those American taxpayers their own rights.

Wait a minute . . . based on this ruling, could a federal employee—say, I don’t know, Barack Obama—refuse to grant federal funding to one of these anti-contraception, anti-abortion medical providers based on his “right to conscience”? Something to look into!

[Also of interest: For this week's paper, I wrote a story about how pharmacists are denying birth control based on "conscience"---or, you know, whatever].

I guess the abortion industry thought they’d jump on the bailout wagon too. Why not? Come to think of it, I spent way too much when I went to Europe this year…what was I thinking? Can the government take pity on me and refund all those lost Euros?

Thinky parts of brain whirring and whirring, and still can’t come up with explanation for this analogy. Do women’s health centers now double as romantic, fiscally irresponsible luxury destinations? Or was one of the culturally rich activities on Anderson’s trip the extermination of millions of innocent unborns? Oooh, don’t make me choose!

Dr. Aline Zoldbrod, sex therapist, says, “If you cut your hair you might be making a statement that says, ‘I don’t want to be seen as a sex object.’”

Matt Titus, published author ( . . . of a book titled “Why Hasn’t He Called?”) says, “Men love long hair; the touch and the smell stimulates our senses. . . . The three physical things that attract a man are a great body, beautiful long hair or great lips. So cutting off one third of your beacons of attraction doesn’t increase your chances of having Mr. Right approach you. It’s like sending a nonverbal message that you’re not interested in sex.”

So that’s why he hasn’t called. Short-haired Jezebel Maria respectfully disagrees, and offers up one pro for chopping it off: “One good part of having short hair? It weeds out the slimy creeps,” she writes.

Ha ha, no, unfortunately, there are slimy creeps for every hairstyle. Speaking as a fellow short-haired lady (some characterize it as the “Farrow“; I prefer the term “Napolitano“), shorter hair hasn’t lessened the number of weirdos propositioning me in poorly lit bars. For every Matt Tisus in the world, there is a stranger lurking just outside a short-haired woman’s field of vision, leering at the exposed flesh of her neck.

Also, I once found a boy I was dating searching for “short hair lesbian porn” on his dorm room computer. So, you know, some people are a little too into it.

Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Defense

THE SMILE, BABY GUY (noun).

Origin: Metro stops, Metro buses, sidewalks, major thoroughfares, porches and verandas (in warmer weather).

Generally considered one of the more innocuous permutations of the Street Harasser, the Smile, Baby Guy is nevertheless suitably condescending and often persistent. His tactic is seemingly straightforward: as you pass his field of vision, he will note that you are not smiling, and insist that you smile, generally against your will. He may then insist that you date, kiss, and/or have sex with him, generally against your will.

EXCEPTIONS (1). Tony, a Smile, Baby Guy who lives on my street and with whom I forged the following verbal agreement last summer: In exchange for smiling each time I saw Tony, baby, he would help me move a truckload of my personal belongings into a row-house inside which I had recently rented a third-floor room. He did so.

See also: the Why Aren’t You Smiling, Baby Guy, the You’re Too Beautiful To Not Be Smiling, Baby Guy, and the Smile, Ladies Guy.

WHY I’M NOT FUCKING SMILING:

(a) The illness progressed quickly: sneezing, sore throat, swollen lymph nodes, post-nasal drip, funny-sounding voice, protracted Web MD consultation, call to my mother, death rattle, insomnia, inability to swallow, pain, oh the pain, peach sorbet, full submission into the waiting arms of the pharmaceutical industry.

(b) I needed those meds. Yesterday morning, I rode a Metro bus to the “Urgent” Care Center (emphasis mine—in truth, the workings of the facility were hardly urgent). It was the only of its kind located within the limits of the District of Columbia and covered by my Creative Loafing End of Season Ski Sale bottom-barrel health insurance plan (now even worse than last year’s!).

(c) Upon waiting two hours, competing with a half dozen other patients (most of whom looked like non-ill little fakers looking for a last-ditch excuses to miss their psych finals), I was victorious—the lady called my name. A scrubbed woman led me into an examination room marked, with pen and notebook paper, as room “3.” Once inside room “3,” I was asked to exit room “3,” whereupon I was led down a hallway ending in a human scale, and weighed. The woman first estimated my weight at 140 pounds, but subtracted five pounds in order to account for my shoes and coat, perhaps expecting that the lower number would please me.

Back in room “3,” I opened my throat—wider—to facilitate the woman swiping a cotton swab across the mucus that had accumulated at the back of my throat. She then took leave of me. While waiting for her return, I opened a February 2007 copy of Mother Jones magazine. Inside was a smiling photograph of a neo-conservative former classmate of mine from University who had run for Congress in his home district, won the Republican nomination, then lost to the Democrat in the general election by 17 points. He attributed his moderate success to “the Web.”

After many minutes, a different woman entered room “3.” Everything suddenly urgent, she informed me that I did not have strep throat, but rather that I had contracted “some sort of virus” that would “go away on its own” with the help of “drinking fluids” and “lots of rest.”

I paused. Was this woman a medical doctor or mere spectre, a lab coat filled only with age-old conventional wisdoms? You don’t have strep throat, and a penny saved is a penny earned, I imagined her saying. You don’t have strep throat, and slow and steady wins the race.

After shining a newfangled medical light-emitting device (a “flashlight”) in my throat, however, the woman reversed her position, urgently, and concluded that my tonsils were fucking enormous and that I ought to ingest 500 milligrams of antibiotics every eight hours until the infected region had been cleared.

“You’ve had something like this before, right?” the woman asked me.

“I’ve actually never experienced anything like—”

But she was already gone.

(d) This interaction cost me $25.

(e) I adjourned to a pharmacy to fill my prescription. Upon realizing, at the pharmacy counter, that I had in fact left my medial insurance card within the godforsaken Urgent Care Center, my eyes, reddened from congestion, flirted briefly with tears. I exited the pharmacy and hastened toward whence I had come. It is at this point that you:

(f) stopped me, on the street corner, and demanded that I smile, baby. Did your testicles retract into your body when I mumbled an incoherent response to your request, my voice high and unnatural, a bitter concoction of nasal drip and post-nasal drip? Or had I simply imagined it?

(g) Turns out I just left the card in my cubicle. I got my meds!

(h) And yet, I would not sleep that night. Foolishly—had I thought myself invincible?—I had consumed several swigs of Night Time Robitussin, the small plastic measuring cup having long ago disappeared into the realm of ideas. It was around the ten o’clock hour that I turned to the medicine cabinet. The sedative far too weak to overcome the sickness, I lay in bed with my eyes open an hour later, waiting for the low buzzing—incessant, purposeful—of every electronic device within a 20 foot radius of my bed to quiet its faculties. When taken deliberately, this gentle overdose of medicine followed by a resistance to sleep is colloquially referred to as “Robotripping,” and creates such an uncomfortable high as to only be undertaken by particularly desperate thrill-seekers of little means (i.e., high school students).

(i) Yesterday, I took six (6) baths. In the sixth and final bathing, which took place at approximately 11:20 p.m. yesterday evening, I endeavored to exorcise my Robo-demons. However, the reserve of hot water in my unit having been devastated by the five baths that had gone before it—and the long, meticulous Lady Macbethian scrubbing of dishes I had mounted earlier in an attempt to forget—I emerged, not healed, but rather defeated, a cold, writhing rat-person, devoid of feeling save for the prickling fear of

(j) Ran out of tissues.

(k) Figured out a way not to swallow while sleeping! Wait until the liquid fills your throat and begins to drip toward your lungs. Then, your body just wakes you up every ten minutes to urgently rake the phlegm from the back of your throat and spit it into one receptacle or another.

(l) Jesus fuck, where did this rash come from?

(m) Tonight is my corporate Christmas party. In this state, I have effectively been disqualified from winning the Lampshade Award, a yearly honor designated for the party attendee who makes the largest fool of themselves. This is no small loss; the Lampshade Award, while dubious, was certainly not outside my grasp.

IN CONCLUSION, I maintain that it is none of your business why I’m not fucking smiling, baby, and I move to request you never to demand that I do so again. As a good-faith measure, I’d ask that you also refrain from making kissy noises at me, baby, or informing me that you would pay an exorbitant amount of money to switch your body with the form of my bicycle seat, which routinely comes in close contact with my vagina, baby.

Photo by ghedo.

Matthew Yglesias thinks the numbers in CNN’s widely-circulated Internet sex survey have been blown out of proportion. Yglesias says the numbers—which reported what percentages of men and women would sooner give up sex for two weeks than the Internet—are actually not terribly high. Forty-six percent of women and 30 percent of men reported that they were willing to stay abstinent for a fortnight in order to keep connected.

Personally, I’d go further and say that the numbers are stunningly low. Speaking from a high place of authority on this matter—I am a sex blogger—choosing Internet over sex for two weeks is a no-brainer. The reason is because time in the sexual realm is so different from time in the Internet world. If a single person goes two weeks without sex, it’s not out of the ordinary. If a blogger goes two weeks without posting, she’s likely dead.

I think we have to consider the possibility that 56 percent of women and 70 percent of men are just lying so that CNN thinks they’re cool. Here’s a follow-up survey: How many of these people have actual sex every two weeks? And how many are incurable Internet nerds refreshing Fleshbot on their RSS feeds every two hours?

Photo by slushpup.

If you’re interested in attending the march, here are the deets:

Begins at Franklin Square, 14th & Eye Sts. NW, at 12 p.m.
Ends at the Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, at 3 p.m.

As always, after the sex workers advocacy march is the after-party. There’s a sliding donation scale at the joint, which is fittingly located above the Royal Palace Strip Club:

Fab Lounge, 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. (happy hour until 9 p.m.)
1805 Connecticut Ave. NW

From Feministing’s analysis of the coverage:

While many are in shock and awe over the “brash” phone conversations she took part in that resulted in the charges against the governor, the Times’ tabloidy take on Blagojevich by painting her as this “first lady gone bad” is just tacky. . . . Taking any opportunity to paint women involved in politics as divisive and manipulating is sadly an old tactic by mainstream media. But when it specifically comes to women who are married to men involved in political scandals, the media seems to usually victimize them for not knowing about their husband’s “double life.” This case, however, is different; her knowledge of it immediately makes her not only his partner in crime, but the trophy wife turned trickster.

Hmm. I’m not sure, given the evidence, how the media is expected to cover either Blagojevich as not “divisive and manipulative.” And isn’t there something refreshing about that?

I, for one, far prefer Patricia’s totally gun-ho [expletive]-that-[expletive]-and-[expletive]-them role in this scandal to the alternative: trotting out on stage with a big ‘ol frowny face and being Very Disappointed in Your Husband. Sure, this not being a sex scandal makes it a lot easier for Patricia to jump on board here. But you know what they say: the couple that pays-to-play together, stays together.

1. Is This Man Your Ticket to the Inauguration?
2. Man Madness: Brookings Institution Vs. Georgetown University
3. The Morning After: Go G0y! Edition
4. The Manliest Workplace Competition
5. eHarmony Fail

Photo via trialsanderrors.

For some, abortion activism begins at conception.

If you’re under 35 years old, you are a post-Roe baby. You were born onto an abortion battleground. Both pro-choice and pro-life advocates want to recruit you into the second generation of the movement. Each side holds tactical advantages in winning your support. To choicers, you’re a young person to whom legalized abortion has always been the norm. To lifers, you’re a “survivor”—you’ve lived though your aborted “peers” have not. Below, a primer on age-appropriate outreach efforts on both sides of the movement, from conception to college applications.

—
CONCEPTION.

Publicize your pregnancy—or your abortion. Pregnant pro-lifers can photograph their fetuses for use in sidewalk anti-abortion campaigns. Face the Truth, an anti-abortion initiative promoted by the Pro-Life Action League, enlarges graphic photographs of fetuses-healthy and aborted-for display on major thoroughfares across America. One common objection to the practice-that it is a “dishonor” to the unborn-is addressed in the league’s FAQ. “We honor these aborted babies’ memories by exposing the cruelties they suffered,” it reads. “What would truly dishonor these children would be to hide the evidence of what was done to them for fear of upsetting some people or looking ‘extreme.’”

As for pro-choicers, Kierra Johnson, executive director of Choice USA, says the pro-life movement doesn’t have sovereignty over the pregnant. “What makes it frustrating is that they have really simple illustrations of what being pro-life means,” says Johnson. “A pregnant anybody is their symbol. For us, it’s a little more complex. The picture runs the gamut for us, from young people who have decided to have children to those who decided not to carry a pregnancy to term.”

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BIRTH.

Still close to the womb but not old enough to wish they had never been born, babies are natural recruits to the pro-life position. “It’s never too early to start talking about life,” says Pro-Life Action League founder Joe Scheidler, a 35-year veteran of the movement who has raised seven pro-life children and 19 pro-life grandkids.

Sarah Smith Bartel, a 31-year-old Hyattsville grad student, brought her 2-year-old and 5-year-old daughters along when she held vigil outside of D.C.’s Planned Parenthood this fall during the “40 Days for Life” campaign. “When I’ve got my daughters with me, they have a symbolic value,” says Smith Bartel, who first engaged her kids in the movement in D.C.’s annual Roe protest, the “March for Life,” when they were just 1 and 3 years old.

Pro-choice advocates, meanwhile, can earn instant cred by having a baby-and proving that choice doesn’t always lead to abortion. “You come across these young people who will say, ‘I feel like I was an activist from the time I was born,’” says Johnson. “They’ll say, ‘My mom took me to a pro-choice rally when I was 2, or when she was pregnant with me.’”

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ELEMENTARY.

Once their children reach school, parents can begin their transition from accessory to activist. “We’re pretty successful with kids. They have an intrinsic knowledge that human life is valuable,” adds Scheidler, who tours Catholic elementary schools around the country educating youth about fetal development. By late elementary school, Scheidler’s pro-life content turns explicitly anti-abortion, with the permission of the teacher. “Having prepared them by seeing the child alive, I will show them the photos of what abortion does,” says Scheidler.

Smith Bartel says that her 5-year-old developed her own activist streak only in the past four to five months. “Now that [she's] older, she has a lot of questions about what we’re doing and what’s going on [at the clinic],” says Smith Bartel of her precocious pro-lifer. “My daughter doesn’t know what football is, but she knows what slavery is, and what racism is, and she knows what abortion is. She’ll stomp around the house, saying, ‘When will this stinking law end?’”

Seeds of reproductive rights awareness can also be sown “as early as first grade,” with the introduction of human sexuality classes in public schools. “A lot of the anti-choice rhetoric gets heard because [pro-lifers] have more access through churches, after-school programs, and even in public schools,” says Johnson, so groups like Choice USA and NARAL Pro-Choice America work legislatively to further comprehensive sex education in schools from elementary on. “I do think it starts with little kids, elementary school kids,” says Johnson. “I don’t mean we’re going to show the STD video to a 5-year-oldŠit’s not all about sex. It’s about communication, self-esteem, and self-empowerment.”
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MIDDLE SCHOOL.

Hit them on their beepers. By the time kids start toting their own cell phones and opting into online social networks, pro-choice groups are ready to reach out with tech-savvy initiatives tailored by age. “The cell phone has become an important symbol of activism,” says Ted Miller, communications director for NARAL Pro-Choice America. Last month, NARAL launched a new youth-oriented Web site, called Free.Will.Power, which Miller says is targeted at youths ages 16 to 24. Among its adolescent-friendly initiatives are automated text message services, YouTube videos, downloadable ringtones, a T-shirt contest, and an online quiz. “Do sexual assault survivors have access to emergency contraception, like the ‘morning-after’ pill in emergency rooms?” one question prompts, before answering, “I know, it’s soooo not okay.”

Those in the pro-life movement have also mobilized to put technology on their side. “Your generation is the first generation that can go to the bookshelf and pull off a VCR cassette, or go to a photo album and see pictures, of what you looked like before you were born,” says Troy Newman, president of pro-life initiative Operation Rescue, who says that the visuals are important evidence against abortion. This is also the age that children of pro-lifers may begin to experience abortion fatigue-and rebellious tweens may defect to the pro-choice movement. “You can turn people off. They get tired of it,” says Scheidler, who also says that it’s important for pro-life families to take an abortion vacation once in a while. “You have to do other things sometimes,” he says. “If we go on a family trip, I don’t talk about it too much.”

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HIGH SCHOOL.

Adopt an activist. Most pro-choice efforts ramp up in high school, where most young adults become sexually active, making abortion a personal possibility as well as a political one. They also begin to develop an interest in social justice-and start looking to beef up their college applications. In addition to NARAL’s Web-based efforts, Choice USA offers sex-ed and community-organizing training to local charter schools, and many of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s college chapters adopt high school groups for reproductive rights mentoring.

Generations for Life, the youth wing of the Pro-Life Action League, encourages high school groups to raise money for pregnancy crisis centers and stage walks and hiking excursions for life. For pro-life high schoolers, the ultimate destination is Washington, D.C.—Missy Smith, a local activist who founded Wake Up (Women Against the Killing and Exploitation of Unprotected Persons) estimates that as many as 25,000 high school and college students attend a youth Mass at the Verizon Center each year on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

In high school, the pro-life set also focuses on abortion as a social issue-and begins folding in its anti-abortion message with such high school history class milestones as slavery and the Holocaust. “Your generation has been targeted for extinction,” says Newman of the post-Roes. “Many Jewish people feel that their aunts and uncles were targeted for extinction. Many African people feel that about slavery. My generation doesn’t understand that.”

Photo courtesy of the Pro-Life Action League.

SWDCBlog reports some good news on one gay-friendly locale displaced by Nationals Stadium: “Ziegfeld’s, the drag performance venue with a decades-long presence in near Southeast, will soon reopen on Buzzard Point in Southwest.” Ziegfeld’s closed in 2005 after 25 years in the neighborhood. The new spot, at 1824 Half Street, is slated to open in late December, and will be split into two venues: “Ziegfeld’s” for drag shows downstairs, and “Secrets” for dancing upstairs.

Photo by procsilas.

Pin-up queen Bettie Page died of pneumonia yesterday in Los Angeles. She was 85 years old.

Thank goodness for wikianswers. Prolific contributor “Bigdozza” has this to say on the subject:

O, goode Bigdozza, what other secrets of womynkind hath you hidden in your folk wisdom treasury? Reveal yourself!

A friend of mine who edits an online magazine (not The Daily Beast) asks me to start up a sex column again. I agree to write something, but since this editor’s taste trends towards the “dating horror story” variety of sex column, I worry that Charles may not approve. For the first time, I actually have to worry about what someone else thinks. I don’t want to write about him, nor do I want to bring up any exes, who have always served as gold mines of material for past columns. I have conflicting feelings of lameness and warm fuzzies: I’m only worried because I really do respect him.

This isn’t to bag on Cutler’s skills as a writer, or to ridicule her happiness—I think she’s witty, and I’m glad she’s happy. But I’m also glad that sleeping with a lot of people and then getting married isn’t shocking, out of the ordinary, or even remotely interesting anymore.

Abortion opponents are pressing state and local governments to stop sending taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood, arguing that the nonprofit group has plenty of cash and shouldn’t be granted scarce public funds at a time of economic crisis. . . . the new lobbying effort, backed by conservative Christian groups such as the Family Research Council, focuses more on economic than moral concerns. The campaign paints Planned Parenthood as a wealthy organization that doesn’t need taxpayer help. Planned Parenthood reported record revenue and a $115 million budget surplus last year, and it is building a network of elegant health centers to attract middle-class clients.

It’s just like those hoity-toity pro-choicers to vacation at “elegant” abortion health spas while everyone else in this country can’t afford to feed the children they’ve already birthed. If anyone knows of a particularly elegant clinic in the area, let me know—I’m currently planning my holiday vacation.

Colloquially referred to as “Human Rights Day.” Is there a gay absent from your office? Did you call in gay? Let me know!

The hearing has been called in response to recent incidents that have heightened community concern over whether law enforcement is responding effectively to reduce the occurrence of hate crime. As indicated in the hearing notice released by Committee Chairman Phil Mendelson, “a recent Washington Post editorial cited FBI statistics that show while the District mirrors the nation in a reduction of racial-bias crimes, according the MPD statistics, hate crimes based on sexual orientation account for the ‘overwhelming majority of hate crimes in the city.’ “

The hearing will be held at noon on Friday, Dec. 12 in the Wilson Building’s 5th Floor Council Chambers, 1350 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.

Haven’t heard back from Eleanor about your tickets to the inauguration? No personal promises that Barack will hook you up with a couple ball passes? Fret not! Last week, The Sexist suggested you compete for the affections of someone with a golden ticket. Today, I present Plan B: Work for it.

Back in 2005, I had the pleasure of attending a decadent Jan. 20 inauguration party held in the hallowed halls of the Smithsonian American History Museum. Martinis were shaken. Black ties were loosened. Mini-quiches were consumed.

Granted: It was the “Michigan State Society Ball,” I was wearing a cheap tuxedo, and I was tasked with circulating a tray of to drunk fancy old people, none of whom I recognized. But O, the pleated pants I wore! The clip-on bow tie I clipped on! The entire tray of picked-over petite pastries hors d’oeuvres I consumed furiously behind a heavy velvet curtain, outside of the incessant gaze of my manager!

If you really want to get inside an inaugural ball, start calling local caterers (I used to work for Restaurant Associates, which is based outside of the Kennedy Center and regularly caters for the Smithsonian) and see if they’re hiring for the new year. Or, wait until Jan. 20, stake out a ball location, put on a tux—bonus if you’re a lady—with a plain, non-ruffled shirt and traction-heavy black shoes, and slip into a line of service penguins outside in the catering tent.

Photo by jrotunda85.