His Name Was Writ In Water

Here lies a poor bastard who died never finishing David Foster Wallace’s book Infinite Jest, though this bastard tried, so hard. Ahh, rest in peace, sucker.

Was entirely prepared to have that etched onto my gravestone. Oho, but what’s this? Behold, do not call me ‘moof’ anymore; I now answer only to the title “Lord of the Universe, Eater of Worlds’ because….

I finished it. I finished it.
I motherfucking finished it.
::dance dance dance dance dance dance dance::

I have been reading IJ, on and off, for what seems like at least half a year. ‘The truth will set you free, but not before it’s done with you,’ an addict old-timer says on an AA podium–he was talking about addiction; hah, he was talking about this book. He was talking about everything, I suspect.

Warning: Coherent review will not follow.

‘What is that book about?’ Legitimate question, as I am always lugging this enormous brick around. I mutter lamely. I make gestures…

‘There’s this virtuoso junior tennis player… who also happens to be a sort of weekend-genius… there are two spies, an American, and a Canadian paraplegic, talking in the desert… there is a half-way house of drug/alcohol addicts, their handlers, caretakers and overseers and their mysterious ways… there is a horribly addicted girl who covers her face with a veil… and a movie (what they call in this strangely North-Ameriparallel but not QUITE North American modern world ‘an entertainment’ of such supremely sublime pleasure value that one glimpse of it will leave you drooling and foaming for more more more until you die.’

Let me start over.

Infinite Jest is about addiction. Addiction to highs, natural, synthetic, emotional, psychological–addiction to excellence, to top performance, to weed, to horse, to tennis, to killing animals, to DILAUDID, to love, to work, to sex, to fame–addiction to lows, and when Foster Wallace goes low, he goes really low, like rip out your eyeballs low, like can you please remove that last five pages from my memory banks low, because you write so VIVID, it’s like I’m having a false memory now. Like I was there.

This is a book about entertainment, like ‘entertainments’–what is entertaining, why do humans crave to be entertained, stimulated, sometimes, at any physical and emotional cost; why, just on this book, you will find many reviews of readers, perhaps rightfully complaining, that a book so long winded, so unorganized, so hard-to-finish has no right–to what? Exist? Be lauded as a genius masterpiece creation? Does an entertainment fail when too many people don’t ‘get it’? And speaking of those annoying fucking air-quotes to let you all know I am too hip to use a phrase as pedestrian as ‘get it’, are we as a society getting strangled by our insistence of always being more clever, more jaded, more issue-laden, more washed-out, more fact-oriented and more cliche-conscious than the next guy? Is David Foster Wallace asking that question, or is he demonstrating, by shanghaiing me into reading 1000+ pages of codswollop, that that is, in fact, what is happening here? I will plow through this because I don’t want anybody to think I did not quote unquote get it??

Sometimes, this book is just one big joke and you, as in I, are the personal hairy butt of it. Because (and addicts often have this mentality too) I am at the center of the universe, correct? Well, my universe, at least.

I was offended by this book. So deeply. Multiple times, I said fuck it. I can only be jerked off for soooo long. Thank you David Foster Wallace for making my wiener bloody, thank you.

Sometimes, ‘Infinite Jest’ and I were on hiatus. But a book and our interface with one is a metaphor for many things, a relationship amongst others, book to reader, and then author to book to reader, and if I think of it that way, that David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest and I were engaged in an on-and-off metaphysical threeway for the last six months… well then I’d say it was totally worth it. ~_~

My advice is hang in there. Getting frustrated by the SAT vocab bombs? You were not alone… You’re starting to chaff after a 20+ page description of a tennis match? Grab lube, keep on. Getting queasy after the tenth page intimately describing a father nightly raping (or was she enjoying it?) his severely physically disabled daughter and her present adoptive sister’s reaction to it? Skip it. But try to hang in there. Haha, like at an AA meeting.

One day of sobriety at a time. Sometimes, I crawled along, eye-balls pulsing, one measly page at a time.

Absurd, uplifting, stinky, drug-ridden, ambitious, truthful, synthetic, flowing, nonsensical, earnest, disgustingly smart and often hilariously funny. You know, like life. Adored it and despised it and will remember it forever.

PS: bricolage, cachinnate, febrile, fuliginous, inutile, scopophilia, and tear-assing down a hill.

WWJD?

No, not Jesus. What would John do?

As in John Steinbeck.

This isn’t John Steinbeck. This is one of my other writing spirit guides, Arthur Rimbaud. With mushrooms, inspired by this lovely blog.

Writing is a little  stressful. I’m trying to wrap up my second novel (3rd, if a graphic novel counts) and it’s stressin’ me a bit out.  Because I think too much. Here’s my advice as one wannabe writer to other aspiring writers:

Don’t fucking THINK. Just write. Thinking is the little mind-killer.

However, in times of over-thinking I sometimes wish I could call some people up. Like John Steinbeck. Man, would I love to ring him up, but he’s dead. Yeah, thanks a lot Death, you  fuck up everything. Good thing there is the internet. All these worries I have in my head, John Steinbeck has addressed them in the past,  aware already that future generations would need to draw on his extreme amazingness, so I pass this along to you, dear readers who may also be writers. Next time you’re penning something and you get stuck and think, What Would John Do?, maybe these tips will come in handy.
And remember, start by abandoning all hope ye who enter here ^^

Worry One: Fucking a, I’ve been writing this for months, nay, years. Am I EVER going to finish? John says:

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

Worry Two: Mmm, I’m kind of stuck on this passage/plot development area thingie. Oh I know, I’ll go back and fine-tune this shoddy language. I’m totally not doing this to procrastinate and not continue. I promise. John says:

2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

Worry Three: Will anybody ever give two screws for this book/story? I feel like I’m writing this for that one friend I still really like from way back when… John says:

3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

Worry Four: Ughhhh, this scene is KILLING me! I can’t, I can’t get past it… I… John says:

4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.

Worry Five: I love this scene. It’s so wonderful, I want to make sweet love to it, slip a diamond ring on its finger and marry it. Too bad it doesn’t really fit in the grand scheme of things. Oh I know, I’ll just rewrite the entire fucking book to make it fit. John says:

5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

Worry Six: Okay, this is actually something I don’t worry about. I am very much in the habit of reading what I’ve written out loud to make sure it sounds okay and I do recommend it heartily.

6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

And the best, right here–

“If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.”

John Steinbeck, how are you so wise??? ::sobs::

Read the full article and more on John Steinbeck here.

Real vs. Not

I’m supposed to be working. When I hit a rough patch, that’s generally the cue to open another browser and look through tumblr. This is a bad idea, no productivity has ever come from browsing tumblr, but it’s irresistible when you’re supposed to be making progress. What’s there not to like, an endless stream of pretty boys, porn, pretty girls, more porn, art, puppies, kittens, unicorns and for whatever reason, the following image. It has come up several times the last few days, and the fourth or so time it came up, I thought. Okay. This is god telling you something moof. Don’t fight the inner dolphin. Let him swim free.

According to Dove’s mid 2000′s campaign, this is what real women look like.

This rant will take a while to unfold, but just roll with me–I am hoping that like Brie cheese, if I let this fester at room temperature for a bit, it will get creamy soon.

Please complete the following sentence.

Every woman has a _____.

I don’t know about you dear reader, but I cannot complete that sentence. There is no word I can find that goes in there that is true for all women, all the time. (Not even every woman has two x chromosomes, because there are chromosomal abnormalities and the such… I know not every woman has a vagina either… ) That is to say, I cannot think of one physical characteristic that everyone who calls herself a woman shares.

Now, I understand that the fashion industry’s current standard of beauty, insofar as an average woman is concerned, is fucked up.  Still, stuff like the Dove campaign above annoys me so much, I could puke. Excuse me, Dove, but can you please stop pooping all over my intelligence?! Yes, those women are all real.

In fact, EVERY woman is real. A 500 pound woman is real. A woman with a beard is real. A woman without breasts because she had them removed is real. A woman who has given birth to 20 kids is real. A woman who has had her tubes tied and never intends to give birth is also real. No matter how unusual or how commonplace, they occupy a place in space–they have a mass and girth.

A stripper with triple G breasts is not a fake woman. She is a real woman who has fake breasts.

A Victoria Secret supermodel is not a fake woman. She is a real woman who is most likely  underweight and has to exercise/starve like hell to look like that. Whatever. Dancers are also underweight. Gymansts are also underweight. Other women are possibly extremely overweight.

And they are all real.

Yes, on one level, I am sick of all these pale, wraith-thin, doll-faced, doll haired chicks being the only marketable form of beauty right now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m part of the wicked and I believe they are beautiful. But I also find many other types beautiful  and if a  fashion label/beauty product wants to try to turn the tides by featuring women who deviate from that standard, wonderful. I will applaud them for their courage and support their product.

But please don’t act like the words ‘real’ and ‘ordinary’ mean the same thing. They don’t.

If Victoria’s Secret launched a similar ad, with a gaggle of supermodels and called it a campaign for ‘real women’, they would be lynched. People would scream ‘You can pray on our fantasies and our insecurities, but you DO NOT get to appropriate what constitutes a real woman!’ But because Dove uses ordinary women who can be found in your office or your class room, they can?

News flash: Every person who says I am a woman, I feel like a woman, I identify as a woman, whether or not she dyes her hair, is severely overweight, shaves her armpits, has fake breasts, has a dick, or still has her uterus in her body is a woman and she is fucking real.

‘k Dove? ^^ Ok, rant over. Whoo, I feel better…

Illu Frito- Suspend

This way, please.

One day, I’m going to draw hair so amazing, it’s going to knock everyone’ on their ass. Today isn’t the day, but I practiced at least. Channeled the inner Durer (according to W, at least ~_~). I drew this pic with the Illu Friday prompt ‘suspend’ and the Cocteau Beauty and Beast movie in mind. If I remember, I was forced to watch that in my junior high French class, only to have it come back….waaaaaay later. (The beauty is walking in the castle and there is blackness, nobody to guide her… only white hands suspended, gently guiding….)

In other news: I was on tumblr when I read a random post about a woman who had more or less accidentally attended a Danny Tosh show (if you don’t know who he is, he’s a comedian who eerily looks like Hillary Swank in his younger clips…) anywhoo, so she attended this Danny Tosh show with a friend, and in true DT style, he started off with a litany of offensive jokes (in this case, rape jokes) to the point where the woman finally yelled out ‘Rape is never funny!’

At which point he said something to the effect of “Wouldn’t it be so funny if that woman [who just yelled that] got raped by five guys, like, right now? Wouldn’t it be so funny?’

To make a long story short, the woman blogged about the experience–it sort of exploded online, I mean, hell, even I read about it, and Danny Tosh ended up writing a sort-of apology on Twitter (followed by a flurry of comments by fellow comedians more or less unanimously denouncing the stupidity of this poor woman.)

And I had to wonder–where do I stand on the issue? I mean, in this individual issue, it’s clear. Tosh could’ve defused the ‘rape is never funny’ shout-out in a handful of other more appropriate ways than suggesting the woman get gang-banged for the audience’s further amusement. It pissed me off that he would say such a thing and I almost wished a bunch of women (or sympathetic males as well) had stormed the stage and taught him a lesson.

Then again, I had watched D. Tosh clips in the past and laughed at any other number of inappropriate jokes he’d made–making me wonder… are there things that should never, ever be used as a joke? In any circumstance?

I can understand why the other comedians rallied to his defense [as fucking pathetic as some of their arguments were, one guy; ‘Oh, so an actor can play a rapist on screen, but Tosh can’t joke about rape?’ was one of the denser ones…so anyway, I can understand why they would defend him–pretty much every comedian is putting food on the table by offending somebody–women, men, homosexuals, heterosexuals, people of religion, people of color, victims of X, Y, Z. Their defense is that laughter is our only defense and if we can’t laugh about something, we are letting it have undue power over us.

And for the most part, I buy that. I like to laugh–I like to laugh at sick shit–I don’t like making things sacred and I laugh equally at what I am and what I am not. Sure, part of it is a mask. If you can laugh at something, I figure, it can’t control you. Religion, stereotypical behavior, slurs. Let’s make them funny and thus bleed their potency a bit.

Or does that just make us callous? Sometimes, these days people seem so scared of taking anything at all seriously. Even the most beautiful and horrible things in life!

Does the ghost of Oscar Wilde have to write and release ‘The Importance of Being Earnest II’?

Too Hot to Do Jack

Okay, so I have a lot of crazy theories.

Crazy, as in not based in science, but in my own conjecture, observations and knee-jerk reactions–still, I figure, observation can be a powerful thing. A few of my favorite crack-pot theories (the list is by no means exhaustive):

Japanese men ever only pass on the XY chromosome and can thus only father male children. (Ask me about this theory sometime. It sounds crazy, but I’ve SEEN it!)

Despite there being a higher level of precipitation in Munich than in any other German city, there is a Germany-wide accepted fallacy that Munich has a wonderful, warm and long summer. I believe this rumor was propagated specifically by Big Beer Garden, whose tendrils are all over the Bavarian countryside.

And last but not least:

Maybe it’s the weather–it’s nice out, so people develop a fuck-it attitude, but warm countries can never seem to get their shit together. On average, they seem to be doing worse than cold/cooler countries.

Now, before anyone calls me a racist, I’ll point out that 1. My observation is applicable to geographical locations and not specific races/nationalities. 2. It is not iron-cast: Singapore is very successful and a tropical country. Russia has frozen testicles littering her streets and there is much poverty. Mongolia (north) is doing worse than China (more South). But there is a definite trend. Look here in Europe, currently: Greece, Italy, Croatia–great weather and economic poop. In contrast, Germany, Norway, Sweden? Weather sucks ass and the economy and infrastructure is purring smoothly.

The US south has always been more economically dodgy than the US North (and then there’s extra dodgy Mexico and extra got-it-together Canada. I mean, they don’t even look their doors, eh??) Africa… the whole continent is warm, the whole continent is not doing so great in economic terms. Asia too–the more tropical countries seem to be struggling.

Anyway, so I’ve had this theory for a while and I thought today I’d  try to find if there was any scientific basis for it at all, and it turns out I’ve been trying to reinvent the wheel ~_~ and this trend is one that has been being pondered for hundreds of years. Montesquieu was one of the first to describe the phenomenon in the 18th century and since then, there have been a couple explanations for it, including:

-Temperate/colder countries had a much more favorable area in which to evolve from a hunting/gathering society to a farming society. Temperate areas also offer a much wider range of cultivatable plants and animals.

-Because of these advantages, temperate countries were then in a position to grow faster, exchange ideas better and then exploit and colonize areas such as Africa and parts of Asia. Once a country is ahead, it tends to stay ahead. Once a country is behind, it is hard to push ahead again…

-Temperate areas have less instances of debilitating diseases, such as malaria, which make certain livestock more or less impossible to keep.

and even

-Regular, yearly frost apparently has a rejuvenating effect on soil and makes it more fertile.

According to a recent study done by MIT, a one degree increase in temperature corresponded to a 1.1% decrease in GDP (a 3% decrease is already considered recession, so 1.1% is rather significant.) Countries were AC is not in widespread use suffer the most when the temperature rises…

Just some strange food for thought.

A Nazgul Is Born

She might be a Nazgul. She might also just be a normal baby. To check, J and (–) and me are off to Berlin for the weekend. Oh, and here is a random picture for you in the meantime. Whoo, why not? Pretty pastel blue, for Easter.

This is Stav S., he is a beautiful Russian boy with very sad eyes. Bird skull in hair inspired by this lady's beautiful photography ^^

So I will be spending my weekend oohing and aaahing over a baby that may or may not have a conehead. (I hope she doesn’t. Paintblotch has basically taught me to distrust coneheaded peoples and I do have a pretty bad prejudice about them now.) Mingling with the inlaws. Keep me in your thoughts.

Sadly, (–) is too little yet to do anything kind of fun like egg dyeing or Easter egg finding, though he did get some nice Easter presents from my mom including (another!) talking animal.

Talking toys rant: You know, I have a love and hate relationship with those creepy talking toys. The kids love them, and they probably do help teach kids some vocab blah blah blah, but… they are so damn creepy. The newest addition to our talking toy menagerie is a dog. All its parts are labeled, and once you turn it on, the kid is encouraged to touch different parts of the dog’s body by this high-pitched sexless voice. [You see exactly where this is going??]

My kid likes this toy a lot, and I’ll be at my computer while he’s on the ground. I can hear the toy:

-Red heart!
-Touch my red heart!
-Touch my ear! Touch my foot!
-I love you!
-You’re my best friend!
-Don’t tell anyone…
-This is our secret!
-Touch my…

Me turning around. Wtf? My kid is smiling. Dog is staring at me with it’s creepy painted on smile, like ‘What? What did I say? I’m just teaching your kid the different parts of the body. Heh heh.’

God, I need to get more sleep.

Happy Easter, moofs. ^^

The Secret Life of Translators II

'One step too late and I never told you...
That I can't take another disappointment...."
Boys <3

[PS: In my next show, I want this. -see picture above-]

I realize I have not written anything on my poor blog for more than a good week now.

Where are you?! A few people have asked. I guess they figure something must be horribly wrong if I don’t have anything to say : D But I don’t, sadly. I want to write you moofs a blog entry full of sex and violence, but my life right now is so fucking boring >< And I am a little down…

One thing to be up about though is that this season for shows is done and I get two new shows. A fresh start! New beginnings! Regeneration! Spring is here!

What shows am I babbling about? Anime, that is to say, Japanese animated shows–we’ve been translating two of them and both have certainly been contributors to my down spirit…

Oh I don’t know… The first show had a wonderful style and characterizations and a really hot main character, just his name was so nice and long, I liked to type it in my Notepad file… ‘Miketsukami’…. prettyyyyy. Miketsukami was a blond, dog-spirited youth with… many tails. 0_0 (You know my tails thing by now, dear reader, surely?!)

So! This show had a pretty guy with a pretty name and and pretty bushy dog tails and interesting side characters and good style in general. But Nothing Ever Happened. Literally. The main plot of the show could have been resolved in about two episodes–the rest of the time, I was translating a 30 minute episode in which the main conflict (no joke) was how does the main female character ask the main male character out to drink a coffee with her?

I waited desperately for scenes in which the male character is at least semi nude, but they added up to about 20 seconds in an entire series >___< Not much to keep me hanging on, let me tell you.

But the other show was even worse. This show began in my mind as ‘Zero’ and later devolved into ‘Louise the Whore’, but not because nothing was happening. Oh no, something happening every other second. Magic! Dragons! Airships! Elves! Hot Young Pope! Hot Young Pope Gets Eaten By Dragon! (Yep. You read that right… ) Boobies! Boobies! Boobies! Ahh, the boobies should have been the tipoff that ‘Zero’ was a member of that fine genre of anime I absolutely detest. I don’t know what the genre is actually called (It is a common trope, so I’m sure it has a formal name) but I myself call it ‘Too many boobs on the dance floor.”

The gist of the genre is this: You have a young guy. He is usually pretty ordinary, but also pretty decent and for whatever reason, has fallen into an extraordinary world (or somehow into a situation outside of his normal circumstance at least) where he is surrounded by beautiful women. They all have ridiculously large, Demi MooreStriptease-era bazooms that bounce like wet balloons at a child’s party. (Side-note: Often, the main female character will have smaller breasts, and this will make for her complex for the entire show.)

This hapless, but ultimately well-meaning young man is thrown into this new environment complete with Sea of Boobs and while he is defeating the Evil or whatever the Fuck, he is always running into these boobs, or tripping and falling on top of one of the girls, getting his face deliciously mashed into her Boobmeat etc. etc. (Did I mention our clueless hero is totally accident prone?) The girls then beat the shit out of him and call him a pervert, but they are in fact all hopelessly in love with him and are all trying to devise a way to confess their feelings (but by the end of the show, he will get together with the small breasted heroine who has won his heart with her fucking annoying high pitched voice.)

This is the genre “Too Many Boobs on the Dance Floor” and if I were King, I would have it banned. It was invented by an evil Cabal of ordinary Japanese men who wish they could trip through their life, knocking their ordinary but well meaning selves into boobs and  having a coven of babes fight over them while they finally pass their high-school exams or defeat the evil dragon (whatever the tedious noise in the background passing as ‘story’ happens to be.)

Boys, take it from me: Never Going to Fucking Happen.

The part where the Pope got eaten was definitely worth a rewind though….

The Boys I Mean

A very refined boy.

And a poem by ee cummings

the boys i mean are not refined
they go with girls who buck and bite
they do not give a fuck for luck
they hump them thirteen times a night
 
one hangs a hat upon her tit
one carves a cross on her behind
they do not give a shit for wit
the boys i mean are not refined
 
they come with girls who bite and buck
who cannot read and cannot write
who laugh like they would fall apart
and masturbate with dynamite
 
the boys i mean are not refined
they cannot chat of that and this
they do not give a fart for art
they kill like you would take a piss
 
they speak whatever’s on their mind
they do whatever’s in their pants
the boys i mean are not refined
they shake the mountains when they dance

—-

THEY SHAKE THE MOUNTAINS WHEN THEY DANCE!!!!!! <3

I have always loved that poem… but I think we might mean different boys…
Have a good week, moofies… scandal and intrigue in the next post. And mourning. : (

No Surprises, Please – Illu Frito

Yes, you are such a pretty boy.

We discussed this in an earlier post about ‘Eraserhead.’ I don’t like surprises. I’ve got a week constitution–for months, nay years, after I saw ‘The Ring’, I couldn’t even begin to approach the bathroom in the dark. The theme of this week’s ‘Illu Frito’ is ‘Suspense,’ exactly that which I don’t like. Not suspense on the screen and not suspense in my life.

But suspense has my fucking phone number! (Don’t know how he got it, even I don’t know my phone number!) This has been a very suspenseful week or two.

Right now, my book is being reviewed and considered for possible material at a teaching conference. (Is it okay to talk about this stuff in a public place? Gee, I hope so.) Well, I’m not saying anything bad or particularly revealing and even if I am not picked, I am already honored at being considered, no hard feelings, but to be perfectly honest, the suspense is starting to kill me. If I’m picked, I get to go to Las Vegas this fall. =) Every day that I don’t hear back from the lady who probably has a billion other concerns on her plate, I tell myself: God, your book is too (insert a May shower of disparaging adjectives here).

I’m doing a telephone interview with another lady next week. (!!) I get three minutes to talk about why I wrote about what I wrote about and why I picked my media. It’s being recorded and I hope I don’t screw up. They sent me a sample audio, so I have an idea of what and how to talk. It was the lady who wrote Persepolis (the graphic novel.) I was like Holy Shit, I’m doing an interview and being put into the same data base as the lady who wrote Persepolis!!!

Is this real life? (No, this is the internet )

I got into an argument with my mom today because some distributor, after ordering a fuckton of my book, decided to actually crack it open and LOOK at the damn thing and they decided it was too profane. So they want to send the whole shipment back to my publisher. (Again, don’t want to give TMI on the internets, so that’s all I’ll say.)  I told my mom that was ridiculous–she said if I don’t want to be censured, I should start writing about ‘nice’ things. Her argument:

‘Victor Hugo didn’t need all that foul language to write his wonderful books.’

‘Victor HUGO,’ I shot back. “Was probably also lambasted for writing about child prostitutes, hunch-backs, beggars, sewers, poverty, riffraff and jailbait when there were all these society ladies sitting around in their parlors in white gloves, aching to be immortalized!”

Then we got into an argument (sort of) about being gay, which was also a lose-lose situation.

“If you have the right to write your controversial opinion,’ she says, ‘others have the right to try to stop you from expressing it.’

‘But I am not FORCING anybody to read what I have written. I am simply making it available. They, however, are trying to force people to NOT read it, by making it less readily available. Doesn’t that make them wrong?”

Not in the eyes of my mum.

Am I wrong?
Am I the asshole?
Sometimes, talking to my mom makes me feel like a really big asshole.

::sigh::

 

 

FF – Failed Feminist

NL. I screwed up. But I like the pic anyway. Maybe my NL fan/stalker will like it too.... <3

Anyway, the topic of today is how I failed at feminism.

Or did I never even try?

I don’t know. A long time ago, I’m not going to call him a ‘friend’. An acquaintance accused me of being anti-feminist. (Is that a misogynist?) But what was his evidence?

That I liked tight pants and booby shirts and that if/when a guy made some kind of comment about my acoutrement, instead of getting offended, huffing away, calling him an asshole etc. etc., I might laugh, even smile and wave…

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

You know by now that I’m a slave to beauty. Beauty and friendship and laughing and coffee. (Oh cheese. Cheese has me enslaved toooo.) J calls me an id-driven fool. Maybe he’s right. And one of this fool’s favorite things is to see nice people on the street in nice clothing. (nice = revealing). Or otherwise interesting. It brightens the day, am I right? There is no harm in that. A branch of cherry blossoms brightens my day and a girl in tight pants brightens my day. And sometimes, I also like to wear tight pants and so forth and so on to give back, so to speak. Give back to the community! And then, isn’t it so silly when someone in revealing clothing  gets offended when a stranger on the street has the good taste to notice it?

-Fucking ASSHOLE, did you see him staring at my taTAS?

I know, I know. It’s wrong to say a woman wearing revealing clothing is ‘asking for it.’ But does ‘it’ have to be ‘raped’, ‘harassed’… can’t ‘it’ be ‘attention’?

Those girls: We don’t wear skanky clothing to attract attention, we wear it because it ‘makes us feel good’.

Well, what makes me feel good is to think that maybe someone is feeling a little better when they look at me. (Like how I feel better when I look at others….) So, in the spirit of that, I see no harm in a little friendly dressing up… and a little friendly leering…. but of course, there are limits. What do we do when the limits have been reached?

Yesterday:

I went out with my friend. We went dancing. I didn’t bring my glasses, because they’re starting to get sort of broken and looking down-ish often causes them to fall. Not good for when you want to DANCE LIKE MAD. We got drunk (me only mildly). We shook it to house. (You thought the American white guy shuffle was bad, you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve come to Germany. Three words: Fritz Can’t Dance.] Then around two, I figured I should go. What if the baby Nazgul woke soon and needed me? His dad was there to take care of him, of course, but…

I ran outside to catch the tram. I didn’t have my glasses and realized I couldn’t read the tram signs at all. AT ALL. Fuck, which one of these goes home? The snow was pouring down. There I was, in my ripped tight jeans and my big black coat, looking a little lost.

-Excuse me. -A group of youngish guys was coming my way. -Excuse me, -I ask in German. -Can you tell me which tram goes to Petuelring?

-Was?

-Petuelring… I can’t see…

One of the younger guys comes right up to me. He looks a little drunk. Not shitfaced yet, just happy.

-Tell you what schatzie -He says to me in German. -I’ve got 40 euros here. And it’s yours, if you give me a blowjob. (It’s funny, because he said the word blowjob in English… So even I got it.)

Me:  0_0

Guy: I got the money right here. Come on, let’s go down there, we can go in a corner or something. [His friends start laughing, but he's echt holding the money out in my face.]

This is where a feminist gets really offended right? Where she busts out the ninja moves, or decks the guy, or at least gives him hell. What, so I’m a girl in tight pants, now I have to suck your stupid-ass dick in a tram station?! What does an adult say in a situation like this? ‘I’m sorry, how old are you? You look like you’re about 18 and you should be at home in bed, or at least be ashamed of yourself!’

A tram starts to pull in behind me. If it’s mine or another one completely, I’ve got no idea. I’m saying the first shizzle that comes to my head.

Me: Do you understand English?

Guy: Yeah.

Me (in English now): I don’t have 40 euros. I’m sorry. I just came from a club. But look…. (reach into my pocket, pull my last bill out) I’ve got ten euros here, and it’s yours if you eat my @58*&#.

Guy: 0_0

Me:   ;D

Tram: Arrives

Friends: Laughing.

Me: Oh looks like my tram is here. Gotta take a raincheck. Ciao.

Guy still staring.

[Me: Get on train. Leer a bit from the upper platform...]

I know, two wrongs does not make a right!! Right??

But I couldn’t be mad at those guys.
Failed feminist.
Or did I never even try?