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Archive for the ‘sociopolitical commentary’ Category

I hope no one is worrying that I’m still down-in-the-dumps and that’s why I haven’t posted since that last gloomy entry . . . I actually felt immediately better that night and my mood continued to improve when AmberLily and BigD got here the next day. It was nice to have Delia and AmberLily doing all of the work while BigD and I sat on the couch and in bed chatting and watching tv. It sucks we don’t all get to spend more time together.

On Sunday we had an early Thanksgiving with my family which included attempting to come out to my 90 year old grandma and explain that Delia is the same person she met before as Tucker. A story like that sounds like perfect blog fodder, but it was pretty anticlimactic after all of the drama leading up to it. I can’t even remember what I said or what she said: something like, “oh! well, nice to meet you . . . people do all kinds of things these days I guess” then to me, “it sure is nice  you have someone to go with you to the movies and on the ferry and things.” The woman is on so much vicodin for her arthritis and muscle spasms it’s hard to tell what she grasped, especially since she was totally blindsided by it since my mom pussied out on prepping her AT ALL. I think she was just happy to see me even if I appear to her to be some sort of a lesbian now. The woman has more pressing concerns managing her prolapsed vagina whenever she goes pee to give much consideration to my transsexual girlfriend (a term I don’t think really sunk in for her).

Between that excursion and a long trip yesterday for shopping-for-shoot-stuff and laser appointment, I’ve filled my quota for driving and ferry-riding/waiting and waiting for the bridge to open and being exposed to cat hair and flourescent lights and other things that run down people of My Delicate Constitution. Today I badly needed to shut myself up in the bedroom to read, snack, and watch bad television, blocking out all outside noises and people and light SO THAT’S WHAT I DID mostly. It annoys me how guilty I feel about doing things like that (and annoys other people because I constantly feel like I have to defend myself) especially when I realize most people with normal jobs have today OFF so maybe it’s okay if I do too (minus immediately dealing with computer/cam issues upon waking and doing a few minor tasks).

I feel like I should say something meaningful about Veterans Day or at least acknowledge that today is more than a “holiday” where I get to feel a-okay about being a lazy ass, but in a way that might be the best way I could have recognized the day this year by immersing myself in Americana like watching The People’s Court while eating skittles in bed and cracking open nuts at a frantic, OCD pace with my eyes glued to the boob tube. I hate the way the word “hero” is bandied about to describe every Tom, Dick and Harry who ever donned a fucking uniform but that’s not to say I don’t respect the enormity of their jobs and the huge consequences of doing them. I think the contemporary knee-jerk hero worship allows people to skim over veterans’ and their families’ losses and scars in the most superficial of ways that can’t even begin to address the lifelong damage and costs so many MANY people keep paying every day for the rest of their lives.

Since people are already playing Christmas music, here’s a quote and directive from one of my dad’s (a Korean war veteran) favorite Christmas songs:

Pray for peace, people. EVERYWHERE.

I went on a google adventure and discovered a guy who loves enormous clits and uses the word “hermaphrodite” to describe women endowed with them. That’s his definition of hermaphrodite: women with prominent clits. It was all worth being exposed to his weird-ass opinion, though, because I got to see a photo of Linda Might, “The Queen of Clits”, who I’d never heard of before.

Jesus, I’d love to have myself a three-inch clitoris.

Anyway, I can’t stop thinking about all of this hermaphrodite bullshit and wishing I could grasp EXACTLY what is so fucked up about these rumours (and people’s responses to them) and articulate that fucked-upedness accurately.

I can’t stop thinking about being in our local candle store and hearing three people engaged in a discussion about Ann Coulter in which one person “informed” the other two that Coulter was “born a man”. Yeah, she’s a tranny! The two women gasped, one declared she’d always SUSPECTED as much, the other asked if he was SURE . . . and he WAS. He was SO FUCKING SURE. He insisted it was true. He backed it up with things he’d heard on Air America.

I wanted to interrupt and tell them they were wrong, but went home to check JUST IN CASE. Because there also seems to be something wrong with just ASSUMING those tales are false. Is it a growing acceptance/awareness (or heightened fear/paranoia/continued ignorance) of transgender that fuels these bullshit stories? Is it just a contemporary expression of misogyny / new way to express or justify hatred and disgust of genetic women people find contemptible or disturbingly sexy (ex. Jamie Lee Curtis)? Maybe, but there’s a weird ambiguity about the way a lot of people talk about these urban legends, like teenagers who WANT to believe in ghosts. One part wishful thinking, one part pure bullshit, and another part pure fear.

Standing in the store I mostly just listened even though they said some stupid shit that made me want to say, “HEY — my girlfriend is transsexual; maybe you should watch what kind of moronic crap you let stream out of your mouth in front of strangers.” Instead I called the store after I got home and verified that the Ann Coulter as Tranny story IS INDEED a myth, told them WRONG. But that seemed to miss the point, too. Even if she HAD been born with a dick, that doesn’t explain her away or make sense of her. That knowledge, if it were true and we could attain it, wouldn’t somehow put her in her place the way people seem to want it to.

Oh well. I’m sure more brilliant minds than mine have got this sorted out and published somewhere with a lot of fancy words and complicated double-talk that will never do anything to help make the average American get it. Someday maybe it will all get straightened out, but in the meantime women-who-confuse-us are the new Richard Geres and Rod Stewarts, with bellies full of cow semen and hamsters up the ass. The tabloids have proof that Obama’s birth certificate is a fake, and we think if only someone would publish that photo of an infant Ann Coulter sporting a pre-op malignant penis, we could win this argument!.

I love casinos.

It’s pretty rare that we go to them (and we have LOTS of nice ones on reservations in Western Washington where the tribes actually make decent money off of them instead of simply being exploited by outside corporations which is what happens in most states) and the amount of money I spend is trifling, but I still love walking around in them and being absorbed by the noises and orderly rows of tables and machines.

A few nights ago I needed to get out of the house so I went with Delia to her 12-step meeting. Meaning I went along for the ride, dropped her off, and headed to the casino by myself. Delia doesn’t like wandering around aimlessly in casinos the way I do so I really got to enjoy spending an hour there with my free Sprite, completely overwhelmed and unsure what to do with myself (but in a good way). Eventually I made a $7 donation to the tribe via penny and nickel slots after I figured out how to get and use their club card.

I allowed myself to be completely unhurried and take as much time as I needed to make and execute the simplest of decisions, like whether or not I should remove my club card from the lanyard so that it wouldn’t be dangling across the screen or tying me up by the neck to the machine. Seriously. I spent ten minutes trying to figure that out and get the card OFF the clip. I am not very bright or coordinated, especially when there’s a lot of distractions around so it’s a huge relief sometimes to be completely alone with nobody (I know) watching and just allow myself to sink into being massively stupid, completely enveloped in the casino atmosphere where you’re allowed to publicly do nothing but throw money away while you sit on a stool and look at little pictures of monkeys and fruit and BARBARBAR spinning around. For hours. I suppose that’s pathetic, but it relaxes me to feel no pressure. To not have to try to be smart. To be hidden between the slot machines that are all taller than I am.

I love casinos enough that I would throw much more money away in them if I could afford to. Enough that I can envision myself having a serious problem, especially if I ever learned to confidently play cards which is one of those perfect-for-Trixie ways of being around other people, in a completely structured semi-social exchange where the object isn’t to chat, but to play and to win. Everybody has a clearly defined role. There are RULES. I like that.

But I don’t have money to throw away so after I (ever so slowly) spent my seven dollars I wandered around looking at the steakhouse menu and the cafe menu and the people and the machines and the gift shop. And while I looked at the two pound steak special it occurred to me that it would be very convenient if someone offered me money for sexual favors. That I would DO IT without hesitating, return to consume my blowjob-earned steak, and spend the rest of it on slots.

On the Golden Girls, Blanche referred to buying things with her body as “using nature’s credit card”. I wonder: what is the percentage of women who 1) want things and 2) immediately scan the room for men who can provide the means for procuring the things that they want. I imagine it’s pretty high. It seems perfectly natural. And of that number, how many would use “nature’s credit card” to seal the deal?

Of course I wouldn’t do that at the casino. Probably not. Unless I did become addicted to gambling.

When the thought first (naturally) crossed my mind it seemed totally logical and if it would’ve only taken 20 seconds for an opportunity to present itself then YES, I would have done it. But after a minute reality set in and I realized I wouldn’t have time to do that before Delia’s meeting was over. I don’t know enough about the casino to know what the risks are. I have no desire to be publicly humiliated there or never allowed to return. I’m not sure what safety precautions to take. And the whole thing would be so much messier and uncomfortable in real life than in my imagination. Plus the guy would probably offer way less money than would be worth it. Plus I really didn’t feel like talking to anybody.

But I didn’t look “hot” so I’d have probably performed, for example, a low-priced handjob with my tits out for groping if I knew it was safe and the guy didn’t want a big long conversation. Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to ever know for sure that something is safe. And I hate the idea of someone following me around, eyeballing me before they make an approach, or worse, following me around afterward when I’m trying to enjoy the money I earned.

It’s much better to be a lone stranger in the casino that the security guys suspect is autistic rather than a prostitute. I didn’t feel like smiling at anybody or talking. I veered away from a chunky black guy earlier (before my whore light bulb dinged outside the steakhouse) who seemed to be pursuing me; in hindsight he might have been a perfect mark for that handjob exchange. But at the time I just wanted to sit alone on a stool at a slot machine without being hemmed in by people on both sides.

At the printing company where I used to work there was an autistic guy working in the art department. He scanned logos and cleaned up the artwork. I briefly worked there too on the night shift. Sometimes our boss would look at me working, obsessively sharpening the edges of black, shaving off pixels that shouldn’t have been there, and would complain with a laugh that I worked exactly like Bill (the autistic guy). I took it as a compliment even though she didn’t mean it that way. Even though she liked Bill better than she liked me, what she meant is that it had been revealed to her that I wasn’t so fucking smart; I was actually slow and retarded with no clue how normal people do things.

Everybody liked Bill. So did I, and when someone got in his way when he was headed somewhere or tried to stop him and engage him in conversation and he’d pointedly stare straight past them above their heads and try to GET AROUND THEM, to steamroll straight past them, I totally understood what he felt like. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but very few people respect how we want to go directly from point A to point B without someone interfering with our straight line. GET OUT OF MY WAY.

I think it’s that desire to connect the dots (going from *not* having something I want to procuring it) in a very direct way that makes turning a trick in a casino to get money for a steak and more time at the slots seem perfectly logical and also anathema to me. It’s not a moral or ethical issue to me at all. It’s not natural to me to think about it in those terms. The notion of NOT doing it because it’s “wrong” is complete nonsense to me. There are plenty of reasons not to do it, but that’s not one of them.

Anyway, I had a good time by myself at the casino. I used to hate public smoking, but now that it’s illegal (except on reservations) it’s been so long that I actually sort of welcomed the stench and that whole Vegas smell. I was dizzy by the time I left.

Call me superficial, but coming home with much-blonder hair meant so much to me – it boosted my mood and ego a billion points. Our hair-chick ratted and teased it to be tall on top because she has a Rock of Love fetish, so to take advantage of it we did a slutty faux-schoolgirl shoot and I was too in love with myself to stop there, so I snagged some webcam shots:

Just the day before this I went to the mall and wandered around by myself while Delia got a laser treatment. I was in my usual comfortable-slob mode wearing a pair of old black sweats that were falling down (the drawstring broke a long time ago so I try to hold it together by wadding the waist up in front and whipping a ponytail-holder around that wad to cinch it up) so it looked like I had shit in my drawers, nerdy silver tennis shoes, and an old-lady baby-blue polar fleece ladies jacket from LL Bean that was a Christmas present from Delia’s mom a few years ago. I looked so old and so tired and so washed out and I felt that way, too. Like I should apologize for looking so shitty.

I had that quintessential “she’s given up on herself” look. Theoretically I HATE that criticism and don’t care what I look like which is part of why I became a webwhore in the first place; since I rarely feel motivated to dress up and be seen, the thought of being paid to do it and have a visual record of the times I did appealed to me. I’d be off the hook and could always point to those pictures as proof that I CAN look good if I WANT to and have already DONE that. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Why do it EVERY DAY? Of course, there’s a slight flaw in my logic since we broadcast spycams and most people paying to see them would like me to look sexy on them all of the time, or at least more often than I do, but whatever. I walked around the mall looking from a respectful distance at clothes and makeup and other ways to improve my appearance, feeling like I wasn’t worthy or capable of asking to touch anything expensive and beautiful enough to make a significant change.

The point is that I looked blah and yucky and didn’t feel good about it at all. No, that’s not the point. The POINT is in the contrast between how I felt that day and the next, when I came home with my hair really blonde and stood in front of the mirror and drew outside of the lines of my lips and filled them in with thick, gooey gloss and frosty highlights and brushed on dark eyeshadow and put on fake lashes.

I felt like magic. Like this is why people want to look like porn stars. Because (sometimes?) it feels a lot better than looking like muted, sloppy shit. And it doesn’t matter if I just applied a boundary of fakeness between the plain foundation of myself and what people see, because it felt best when I was the only one looking at myself there in the bathroom mirror or taking self-absorbed pictures of myself.

Why am I hiding the plain truth under all of this bullshit self-criticism and analysis? All I’m trying to say is that looking in the mirror and seeing yourself looking like a hot fucking slut feels VASTLY SUPERIOR to slouching around feeling like an unattractive slob. It’s inconvenient, but true. No matter how much I wish my protestations that looking good is a waste of my time and money were true, THEY AREN’T.

It’s fucking biology that we want people to want to fuck us on sight, that we want people to be jealous of us, that we want people’s eyes to light up when they see us, that we want to advertise our fantastic genes (or that we want to look better than our average ones). If you’re a woman (who isn’t still shattered by one or more people hurting you because you looked like hot sex and they took it from you) some part of you wants people to look at you with desire and appreciation. Even when it annoys me to be gawked at, it charges my fucking battery. It’s absolutely electric.

You want to look so good that you can control a man into paying for dinner just to get a whiff of your hair and stare at your cleavage, that you can render him insensible to paying for everything you need to keep looking so good — to maintain your value and keep commanding higher and higher prices — shoes that make your feet arch and sparkly jewelry accentuating all your graceful, slender parts and tight pants and shiny hair and fat, pouting lips and pampering spa treatments performed by undemanding female hands that MIGHT just render you pliant enough to be amenable to saying “thank you” with your soft body. It’s an expensive art and time-consuming work to always look like a shiny, animated toy cocksucker and I’ve never mastered it or even kidded myself that I could compete on that level.

The older I get, the rarer and more exciting it is when I get a taste of what it feels like to BE hot sex. Normally I am the one LOOKING at one of the shiny girls, simply appreciating how they glitter from head to toe, putting so much time and money into tanning, waxing, accessorizing, and accentuating every single morsel of their bodies. Hoping that someone admires and respects it enough to make it worth their while, constantly forgetting that there are intrinsic rewards to looking like honey come to life and taking soft female form and maybe that is enough for them.

My head and body have been so fucked up and bloated and distorted off and on for so many years that now, getting it back on track, I’m at an age where I don’t take it for granted anymore that tomorrow I could be riding some strange boy’s cock and having him looking up at me in complete amazement and disbelief, moaning about how he can’t believe he’s really fucking me. That might never happen again, which is fine, but it would still be nice to know that it’s POSSIBLE even if I don’t want to act on it (it actually feels especially powerful knowing I probably won’t). How many years do I have left where I’ll be ABLE to turn heads in public? You don’t have to be a great beauty to make that happen. Do I really want to waste those opportunities playing the invisible slob?

It’s disgusting to admit, but when I pass a mirrored column in a mall I want to make myself wet looking at myself. When I walk by a shiny window of a restaurant I want to see my own reflection on top of people who are WATCHING me and not be able to resist smiling, knowing that they are delighted and mesmerized by what they see. ANY woman can manage if she has time and the desire to advertise herself using resources like bleached hair and juicy lip stains and clothes that highlight your best bounce, wiggle or stride. Resources she can extract from men. It’s the OTHER circle of life. It might be a totally fucked up stereotype of gender roles, something progressive men and women want to move away from (or better, switch up for fun — I do fantasize about being a sugar mama to young women and sometimes men), but sometimes I can’t help celebrating it and wanting to WIN at it and enjoy the cheap/expensive thrill of it.

Attempting it often feels awkward and unnatural and hardly-worth-it, but when it works the rewards feed some primal need in me that are so close to my core I can’t dismiss them as fake or stupid or unhealthy. There is no pretending we can evolve past this.

Note: originally this entry included more reflection and deeper insight on where my confli
cted feelings about making myself up to look “sexy” (or at least presentable) in public (and in general) might have come from but it turned into a total downer so maybe I’ll save that for another time. I feel like I should apologize for my undying fascination with mulling over these matters and warn you that they don’t end here and I can’t unwaveringly commit to any one perspective on them.

I’m already totally embarrassed by this post even though the whole point of it is not to be.

GROSS.

I wish I had more time and brain power to consume other people’s blogs because when I do, I come across provocative and revealing entries like these two about class:

Keeping San Francisco Safe From Prostitutes?
Melissa wrote this back when SF voters had the chance to decriminalize prostitution. They didn’t, of course, and her post explains a lot of reasons why even a supposedly-progressive, liberal, educated population is ignorant and afraid of sex workers running amok:

“The biggest opposition to Prop K isn’t anti-prostitution feminist groups. It’s ‘neighborhood associations.’ Unlike even the most socially conservative feminists, they never say, I don’t want sex workers to be raped. They say, I don’t want to see sex workers. Don’t want to see them on their front steps. Don’t want to see their clients or ‘pimps’. Don’t want to see condoms, or syringes. In short: don’t want to see poverty, don’t want to see poor people. . . . What K opponents will never say in public, is that it’s not prostitutes that are hard to live next to — it’s poverty.“

On a more personal note, Amber Rhea posted an extremely intimate entry yesterday sharing her memories of class-consciousness developing in childhood and young adulthood and reflections on all of that jazz (like how attending private school probably saved her life).

“My mom was a bartender until I was 7 or 8 years old. When I’d go spend the night at friends’ houses, I’d take my toiletries in a purple Crown Royal bag (we always had tons of them around the house). We also had a lot of extra beer/liquor T-shirts that I used as nightshirts . . . . it wasn’t until I was in my teens that it dawned on me why [my friends'] parents might think it’s weird for a 7-year-old to carry a Crown Royal bag and sleep in a Finlandia T-shirt.”

Without going into a lot of detail (just because I don’t have time to write that book right now), I can’t overemphasize how much my socioeconomic background shaped my identity and values. More than being female. More than being white. Even though both of those things are a big huge intrinsic part of it, the money stuff and place my family occupied (pretty low down) in the hierarchy colors the way I see and respond to pretty much everything, I think, and in such insidious ways that I’m constantly chipping away at my lack of awareness at how deep it goes and how far back and how much it continues to effect my options and choices today.

Sometimes I feel like discussions about race and gender are just big polarizing distractions to keep us from addressing the BIGGER, all-encompassing issue of class. They’re not, but sometimes I feel that way (and I know some other people do, too).

*****

A related note: right now I resent the way blame is laid for the recession. Instead of saying that banks ass-raped tons of people who probably COULD have made their mortgage payments if not for the usury/deception/inflated interest rates and doubled/trebled payments, every comment seems designed to tell us that banks simply LENT MONEY TO POOR PEOPLE. Like, THAT was the big mistake. As though those borrowers could never have made FAIR payments on mortgages with FAIR terms. As though people wouldn’t have felt the need to take out second and third mortgages to be able to pay credit cards with ludicrous, unjustifiably-high, ass-raping interest rates.

The mainstream discussion about it and language referring to sub-prime mortgages, etc. is all backwards; it *pretends* to call the lending institutions and big mucky-mucks greedy while using language that continues to make it sound like the banks’ problems were making bad bets on bad people, when really they fucked vulnerable people dry, butt-ramming them straight into the ground. Let’s just bleed these people dry. When you make financially troubled people pay exorbitantly high interest rates and double their minimum payments, etc. what the fuck do you THINK will happen? Unless they win the lottery, they’ll never be able to keep up or dig themselves out of the deep grave the lenders dug for them.

I’m not making these comments as someone who thinks she has all the answers or understands the complexity of all of it or is well-read on the subject. I’m making them as an average joe butt plumber based on her own experiences with banks and mainstream exposure to superficial news with a little bit of deeper reading here and there. My intention isn’t to spark a big-ass discussion about it, just web-log some stuff. The above paragraphs are only a small chunk of reflection, not a complete or coherent argument. I won’t publish comments from people assuming I’m claiming to be an expert or assuming that because I haven’t written this or that or included another bit or piece, that I must not agree with this or that bit or piece, nor will I publish comments demonstrating a lack of comprehension regarding what I already wrote. HATE that.

For the record, my interest isn’t really in “punishing” rich people (even when they DO *deserve* to be hung from the highest tree) or placing limits on how much money people can make, it’s on making fair regulations and restrictions on how deeply people can be abused. It’s on little things that would change a lot. LIKE NOT LETTING CREDIT CARD COMPANIES MAKE YOUR PAYMENT DUE ON A WEEKEND OR HOLIDAY, THEN CHARGING YOU A LATE FEE AND RAISING YOUR INTEREST RATE BECAUSE YOU FAILED TO PAY ON TIME WHEN YOUR PAYMENT ARRIVES ON THE NEXT BUSINESS DAY FOLLOWING THE DAY THEY DEMANDED YOUR PAYMENT, BUT CAN’T EVEN RECEIVE IT/WON’T EVEN PROCESS IT. It’s a pretty fucking simple matter — we have the technology at this point to automatically reject a date that is a holiday or weekend and chose either an earlier or a later date, or to have a FAIR regulation that doesn’t even ALLOW lending institutions to punish you for not delivering a payment on a day when delivery of said payment IS IMPOSSIBLE.

Seriously. I don’t understand why everyone isn’t talking about things like this. Everyone. All day. Until something happens.

Just one example. I know *some* people are talking about it some of the time, but it’s not on headline news, etc. every five seconds the way Chris Brown is. Instead everyone just ignores and skirts around these tangible, obvious bits of fuckery. It just keeps adding up, but I don’t hear anything except “bail out”. If anyone has links to proposed regulations tightening this shit up, I’d love to read it because as it is right now I’m too busy bitching about it to look the shit up (I know! I’m an ass!). I know awhile back congress was talking about putting an end to the credit card companies burying high interest rate balances under the lower interest rate balances, but I don’t know whatever became of that/if they are in fact now forced to automatically apply payments to the balances with the highest interest rates first.

Why am I still sitting here blogging about this? Seriously, all I was going to do was post two links. Gaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh . . . hate myself for not keeping up with the news on this stuff better.

Just a quick entry to say we’re busy getting ready to be gone for a few days trying to shoot something specific. Outside. And it’s WINTER. But that’s when it needs to be shot. Mostly we’re just trying to get ready (much more complicated than you might imagine unless you’ve done our kind of work and the same way we do it) and it’s been snowing (again).

I anticipate having cold fingers, legs, buttocks, etc. a lot on Thursday and Friday. And then we’re going to celebrate a late Christmas/early Valentine’s day/Friday the 13th dinner with my mom. I’m looking forward to it, but also dreading certain things and am practicing stress management techniques while I’m not actively working.

Yesterday we went shopping for additional costuming for aforementioned shoot and after hours of sifting through second-hand clothing my nasal passages, throat and head already felt invaded by that weird, unsettling thrift-store smell that makes you feel like you’re coming down with some old-lady sickness. Then we went to the drugstore where a lady was coughing. AND COUGHING. And hacking.

I’m not the type who’s EASILY grossed out by random germs, sneezing or coughing people in public, but my mucous membranes were already feeling vulnerable after searching through three thrift stores and this woman was really projecting her spittle. She made half-assed attempts to cover her mouth with her hand by holding it up six inches from her face and coughing TOWARDS it, not into it, and then she walked around briskly touching every single thing in the store with that hand. On top of that there’s something unsettling about this woman; I’ve seen her around town before and she’s like a fascinating fifty-seven year old dolly with long, youthful dark-blonde hair in waves worn in a loose asymmetrical ponytail. Her face is powdered porcelain with spots of rouge on her cheeks. Her lips and eyes are lined and her features are girlish except for the wrinkles around her mouth. Nothing about her says middle-aged, which is probably what she is; instead she’s a duality of eleven-year old girl and seventy-nine year old woman. I’d totally follow her around the store to stare if she didn’t give off such an aura of contagion.

When we got to the checkstand she got in line behind us and it suddenly started pouring down snow outside. The cashier kept interrupting our transaction to answer the phone and I felt totally hemmed in by winter, like she wasn’t going to give up until she infected us with post-nasal slush.

Because I DO NOT want to get sick right when we’ve got time and money invested in shooting, I came home and started swilling down emergen-c until I was totally high (see this tweet followed by this). I rarely get colds (I think I’ve averaged maybe one cold or flu every other year, if that, in the past fifteen years) but I’m still paranoid enough to often feel like I’m coming down with one.

So. The goal today is to get a million things done, not get sick, stay calm, and leave as early as possible tomorrow so we can arrive at our destination safely while there’s still daylight so we can plot our shooting locations for Thursday and Friday.

I won’t be checking email while we’re gone, we have webcam shows and chat scheduled when we get back (on Sunday and Monday), and I’ve only responded to maybe 3% of my email over the past year, so . . . yeah — if you want to talk to me any time soon you’ll probably need to be a member who shows up to one of those live cam events next week. Wish us a productive trip!

*****

Speaking of my limits, two seconds before I hit “publish” on this post, I got a comment on my last blog entry from a guy who has a problem. Here’s the comment:

I hope someday that you will reply to my comments. Forever seeking your feedback, Furry Freak Bro, aka4JerryGarcia, Merry Pranksters, etc.

He might be a nice guy (if memory serves he acts normal during camshows), but he is one persistently demanding motherfucker who cannot take a hint. Facebook, twitter, email, blog comments — they all say basically the same thing: Hi there – respond to me PLEASE; I await your response. Please write back to me. If you commented back it would make my day. Your fan, xoxo blah blah blah
WHAT. THE. FUCK!?!?!

First of all, you’ve said nothing to me that warrants a response. Second, if you’re a fan of mine you’ll see that I don’t engage in a lot of idle chit-chat, particularly the hi/good morning/waving/hugging/emoticons variety and if you have any reading comprehension you can see that I’m KIND OF overwhelmed, constantly talk about not having the time or energy for email, trying to keep my hours at the computer limited to a healthy number and use that time productively, etc. How long would it take if I said “hi” or “good morning” or “YES! I fucking SEE you!!” to every single person I encountered online? I would have no fucking life and no time to respond to people who actually put a lot of thought and effort into writing to me.

So I blocked him on Twitter so I wouldn’t be bombarded by his pleas for attention, but now he has the balls to make that comment on a blog entry that essentially says I’ve been feeling like shit and have barely had the energy to drag myself out of bed and now that I’m feeling better it will take awhile to catch up on everything. But listen; even if I were all caught up and had ample time on my hands, the last thing I would feel like doing is encouraging these incessant, self-absorbed, petulant guilt-trips seeking acknowledgment.

I really try to not be mean and to consider that even wonderful people have blind spots, bad habits, etc. Before I ream someone’s ass I sometimes try to imagine the person might be borderline retarded or otherwise lack the skills or comprehension to function at a higher level; maybe all they know is that the internet is a friendly place where you can look at pretty girls and get them to say ‘hi’ to you. And seriously? There are a lot of pretty girls online who make that their sole job/function in life; collecting myspace friends, saying ‘hi’ and ‘hugs’ to everyone, making a name for themselves that way. BUT I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE GIRLS. Get it?

Honestly I try to just ignore this person and others like him (ex. No one’s responded to my messages — I guess no one loves me) because I don’t have the time or mental capacity myself to discover a nice way to tell them to STOP ACTING LIKE CREEPY STALKERS (when they’re not really even BEING particularly creepy or stalkerish, just obnoxious) and understand that from my perspective I just feel bombarded by people who want think they deserve to have me interrupt my life to instant message them. I don’t care if it’s only two letters. H. I. Obviously it won’t stop there. Next it will be “what’s up? Do you like me? How’s the weather?”

You wanted my feedback? You’ve got it, fucker. Try to see things from other people’s perspectives. I don’t *expect* people to waste their personal time empathizing with me or reading my long-ass blog posts, but if you send me hundreds of messages asking ME to waste my time on YOU, especially by begging for warm fucking fuzzies in the comments on a post where I admitted I felt like I was losing my fucking mind, you’ve got another thing coming.

An appropriate comment from him would have been, “wow — I’m so sorry I’ve been sending you guilt-riddled whiny-posts on virtually every social networking site where you appear asking you to respond to NOTHING when you obviously have a lot of other things going on. What was I thinking?” Or, “man, I know what mental illness is like because I am compelled to pester women online; now we finally have something in common we can talk about if you ever have time; ’til then I totally un
derstand if you don’t want respond to me. I mean, sheesh — if you did that to everyone your whole twitter feed would be, @wanker hi!, @dipshit hi! @asshat I see you there, bugging me! Boy, that would be silly! I’m so sorry for thinking only of myself.”

If you’re a true fan of mine it should be obvious that my JOB is not to sit around sending individuals empty messages of bullshit for free to verify to you that you exist. Find another way to add meaning and affirmation to your life because your current method is insulting and dehumanizing; I’m not a fucking robot or video game where you press buttons on your keyboards and I do a little puppet dance or a doll with a string on her back that you pull to get her to say one of eight pre-determined messages. I like you! Thanks for being my fan! You’re number one! Good morning, sunshine!

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarf!! Seriously, I do not want to insult everyone who sends me thoughtful messages, shares themselves with me, wants me to know they appreciate what I do, etc. What I’m complaining about is a very particular brand of bullshit that fuels the empty “interaction” passing for “socialization” online. It’s gross. A total waste of time. Say hi once or twice to me this way if you want, but don’t incessantly needle me to respond. I was going to say, “don’t needle me to reciprocate” but if reciprocity is what you want, THIS IS IT. Complete and utter selfishness. My little wants and desires trumping yours. I would send virtually the same message every day: Send me ten dollars, please? Hi it’s me, Trixie — still awaiting your dollars. I found you again! When WILL you join my site? It’s Friday. Write back with the dollars. Even five would be nice. Say good morning to a good girl with seven dollars? Hello. Do you get these? If so respond with fifteen dollars. Your friend online, needing your dollars. Actually, that would make a billion times better sense than what he’s doing, but it would still be way too boring and time-consuming for me to enjoy. I don’t want to do data entry, I want to do MY. WORK.

And tweet about picking my nose and pooping. These witticisms don’t grow on trees, so don’t interrupt me! I’m trying to fucking THINK.

While other women are out shopping for bargains today, we’re staying home to masturbate on cam. Yes, I planned it that way deliberately to target the men in the states who stay home jacking off to internet porn while the wimmin-folk are out in the malls blowing money.

I’m sure many of those women would call me evil, exploiting the Thanksgiving holiday for profit by appealing to people’s “base” instincts. Leading their men-folk astray and causing them to cyber-cheat while their loving wives are out dutifully blowing wads of dough.

Can you tell I think that’s all a crock of shit? The way the chaste and moral crowd points their fingers at whores like me while they’re out TRAMPLING PEOPLE TO DEATH for Black Friday bargains?

A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said.

The unidentified worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

As far as I know, no one has ever had a miscarriage watching porn, so take THAT family values!

I break out into a cold sweat whenever I hear about and imagine crowds-gone-wild; all of those sports arena horror stories and such make me crap my pants; I am deathly afraid of the mob, of our basest, wild-eyed instincts stomping the fuck out of each other. Of having the breath crushed out of me.

We were watching one of those MOST SHOCKING CRAZY-ASS THINGS CAUGHT ON VIDEO shows the other night showing a riot in Vancouver after a hockey game; people running amok, setting shit on fire, overturning cop cars, smashing into storefronts, etc. It’s just bizarre to me that people are so scared by PORN and do so much to try to censor it out of existence, but no one ever says we should stop allowing mass-attendance at sporting events, or we should ban sports all together. It’s a stupid proposal, I guess, but one that makes WAY MORE SENSE than getting rid of porn or continuing all the lame-ass crackdowns on sex work in general.

People are fucking insane, especially when they’re in large groups where they feel no personal responsibility for the damage that can be done by the mad power of the unstoppable horde.

On that note, I must now prepare myself for the unruly, anonymous crowds that might attend my webcam show in a couple of hours. But no matter how badly they behave, it couldn’t possibly be as unpleasant as SHOPPING today.

Thanks to Delia for the heads up on today’s trampling death.

The other night we heard Martin Short ask Conan O’Brien if it’s okay to say “penis” on television. Conesy assured him that if it’s a “medical” word you can say it on tv. So they said it, “PENIS”, over and over. Martin also said, “ding dong”, “my unit” and a whole bunch of other terms as he used his hands to indicate EXACTLY what part of his body he was talking about.

Google agrees that “penis” is a word that should not be censored; even if you have SafeSearch on “strict filtering”, you’ll get 33,000,000 returns.

Guess what happens if you do a search for “clitoris”? BIG FAT ZERO.

I only learned of this reading Susie Bright’s post about this twisted double standard. Of course, to be fair, “vagina” doesn’t seem to be considered a dirty word since I just turned on strict filtering and did a search for that term and came up with (considerably fewer than penis) results so . . . yeah.

It IS upsetting and there’s clearly a weird double standard; it’s hilarious (in a very dark way) that anyone would think a clitoris is more dangerous than a penis, and “dangerous” IS the opposite of “safe”, isn’t it? Still, I don’t know that I feel exactly the same way about it that Susie does, though I think hers is an important perspective full of many truths and that we should all be pissed off about this kind of bullshit. But part of the hate, shame, and willful ignorance of women and women’s bodies is wrapped up in the shame and disgust men feel (and women AND MANY *FEMINISTS* REINFORCE AND ENCOURAGE) over straight men’s sexual response to women. If it’s a part of the body that makes a straight man’s dick hard — something they want to see and touch and lick and talk about and see pictures of — then it needs to be censored to save those crazed pudwhackers from themselves and the women from the damage that is wrought when men think of women in a sexual way!

I’m not sure “the giant obscene ‘F’ word in Internet censorship is feminism”. Yes, I think this is a feminist issue, for sure, but I don’t think the sole or even the primary motive for/cause of banning a word like “clitoris” from google’s safe search is a clear desire to silence feminists and shroud women and their bodies in a reinforced veil of ignorance. Sure, that’s one of many RESULTS (and there are plenty of places where plenty of people DO make silencing feminists and campaigning against women and knowledge of women’s bodies number one on their agenda) and it’s easy to see why Susie would feel especially pissed about it when she’s not one of the sex-negative feminists who thinks that every boner sprung is a rape waiting to happen (a way of thinking that, combined with the conservative, supposedly apolitical woman’s belief that every time a man masturbates to pictures of women who aren’t his wife that a family is destroyed, has made the men who are still in charge very eager to PRETEND to try to disapprove along with us of their dirty habit of jacking off over images of our bodies) . . . and when you turn safe search off to find “clitoris”, the seventh page-one result is her post on the internal clitoris, etc. Obviously safe search filters could make it harder for Susie to sell books.

A little diversion: laughably, the retarded UNfactual “ask men dating and love tip” page on “understanding the clitoris” ranks higher than Susie’s or Scarleteen’s pages, but that’s probably because a site like AskMen works a lot harder on search engine optimization than educators, artists, writers, political activists, etc.). The web used to be more of a woman, but now it’s poorly micromanaged by algorithms cooked up by men. Are their little mathematical formulas conscious attempts to censor feminist obscenities (like truth)? No. I don’t think so.

There are so many more pointed ways that women and the truths about our bodies told from our own perspectives are smacked down by corporate censors that the banned google clitoris isn’t at the top of my list of things to use as an example. It’s the more obvious and uncomplicated stuff I’ve had to deal with as a pornographer (one of those “commercial porn-makers” Susie identifies as someone who she thinks doesn’t suffer from bans and censorship the way artists, writers, educators and political activists do, which is an annoying and probably unintentional slap in the face I’ve felt delivered from the latter group and their “poor, starving, I-do-it-for-love-not-money mentality” before — I guess they always think we’ll know that they don’t mean pornographers like Tony Comstock who of course get to be included as ARTISTES) that really chap my hide as clear-cut cases of misogyny combined with the anti-sex backlash perpetrated by the feminists who deign to speak for all of us. Again, it’s not that Susie is one of those people, it’s just that I see feminism as one of many complex contributors to internet censorship, not just a victim of it.

So what IS a clear cut case of anti-woman, ignorance-enforcing internet censorship? When credit card companies and their processors tell me my body (and yours, if you’re a woman) is OBSCENE when I’m menstruating and I’m not allowed to talk about it or show pictures of it or have sex with myself or other people while I’m having my period on any domain where I make money selling my porn. When they spider our sites looking for banned words, take them out of context and threaten to take away our ability to be paid for our work even when it IS political, educational, artistic, etc. Guess what? Google is not the entity afraid of my bloody pussy. Google is not the entity hiding or demanding I delete blog entries discussing political, legal and ethical issues containing banned words. I just have to cross my fingers when I make posts like this one that they won’t come fuck with me, but technically I am defying their terms of service right now by posting this and could have my business shut down because of it. And it’s not just “the man” who’s against me, it’s the (other) feminists, too.

Censorship isn’t something you can blame all on men and their holy penises and their desire to stamp out feminism. And I’m starting to rethink that great old joke she mentioned; “if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” It’s totally true, but I’ll bet if that were the case today, feminists would quickly become the new pro-lifers. The gender wars are far from one-sided and I’ve been hit by a whole fucking lot of “friendly fire” over here on “our” side.

I know I’m being oversensitive and carelessly lobbing my own grenades in the wrong direction at people who are my allies, but oversimplifying everything as “anti-feminist” undermines all of our arguments and neglects to acknowledge the ways that some of feminism’s “successes” have led to these failures along the way. There’s a bit Bill Maher does that annoys the FUCK out of me to listen to (off-topic sidenote: I didn’t like much about “Religulous“, fyi), but I can’t help thinking of it right now because some of it’s true and applicable:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z8j4QJ0oiY&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6&border=1]

My guess is that banning “clitoris” has very little (if anything) to do with a campaign to censor feminist thought and information and women’s bodies, and
a whole lot more to do with thoughtlessness along with this thing Bill Maher talks about, with men trained to bow to “feminized”/feminINE values that anything that makes them erect is BAD. When you layer that onto the big problems that we SHOULD be focusing on like a) the people that make decisions in big companies being men, and b) men assuming everyone who uses their tools (like search engines) ARE men, and c) all men are straight, you wind up with guys jumping to the conclusion that any search for a clitoris is one that’s going to make someone bust a nut and is therefore unsafe. Or maybe a whole lot of confused and retarded thought WAS put into it (with a, b and c still factored in) and they decided that since, as feminists will proudly point out to you, they’ve heard that clitoris is the only organ with the sole function of PLEASURE, and MEN HAVE BEEN TAUGHT THAT THEIR PLEASURE IS BAD if they experience it themselves, especially by objectifying women in pictures or on the internet, that it should be banned. Or maybe it’s totally ridiculous to imagine ANY THOUGHT WHATSOEVER went into this arbitrary “decision”. I highly doubt that a bunch of people came together in a room with a picture of a cock on one side of the chalkboard and a vulva on the other, and came to a consensus that CLITORIS is a dirty word but PENIS isn’t, and high-fived each other on the way out the door saying, “right on, man! Another way to stick it to feminism!!”

Ultimately I think it’s paranoid to say, “it’s been clear for a long time that the giant obscene “F” word in Internet censorship is feminism.” And untrue. And I say that as someone who believes it IS true that feminism (and accurate information about women) is censored, misrepresented, considered obscene and something to quash and oppose on a very large, grand scale. I just don’t think that’s the case here with google and the clitoris, and if you want to point at double standards, the more glaring one is ignoring how much power and influence feminists and women in general have had and continue to wield in censoring the internet, art, and women who capitalize (the first offense) on men’s desires by selling them access to their bodies (second offense). It’s wrong to imply that feminist writers, artists, etc. have suffered more from internet censorship than pornographers.

Sure, feminist writers, artists, etc. make less money than smut peddlers as a whole, but that disparity has nothing to do with censorship – porn makes money in SPITE of censorship that FAVORS women writers and artists (who don’t create graphic material that is VISUAL), and is DEMANDED by the tag team duo of feminists and conservative women. You want to know why most women don’t make money on the internet? BECAUSE THEY DON’T WANT TO. Because they don’t even try. Because they are content sitting around bitching and blogging and crying on each other’s shoulders feeling superior because they aren’t whores motivated by money, no they care about PRINCIPLES and getting warm fuzzies commiserating with each other and expect the “community” to take care of them rather than creating something marketable and making enough money to buy influence and support their causes themselves. Because they rely on the man to pay them just enough that they can bitch about it being unfair and that they only do it because they HAVE to, rather than BECOMING the man long enough and with enough success that they can subvert the system. Women don’t make money because they love just scraping by and they think that makes them superior to men, because they don’t think big except in terms of imagining some big plot designed to keep them barefoot and pregnant.

Whatever. Enough of this baloney — I need to stop being a hypocrite and make me some fucking money.

Guess what gets the most play on our satellite? It’s the XM channel called Audio Visions playing new age music. We have it on almost all of the time; our dog LOVES it, curls up right next to the speakers and trances out. During the day they sometimes play annoying cheesy crap, but at night they start up with “Night Visions” and this creepy woman with a vampire accent practically whispers interjections like, “in the TOETull dahknessss of nighyyt you sseeeee nahthing but ah beeelliyawn starssss . . . NAHthing but peeeeeeeeace, sweeet peeeeeeeeeissssssse. This is oddyo veezhuns, and you haf nighyyt veezhuns.”

So yeah, we totally love it and daily mimic her pronunciation of Audio Visions, like when we see the longing look in the dog’s eyes and ask, “awwww, do you want your awwjoveezhuns?”

Audio Visions rocks at night when they play spookier, spacier new age music, including delicious programs from Hearts of Space (note: only new age nerds would be oblivious enough to the world to waste an excellent three-letter domain like hos.com on music that once had such a limited audience it could only find space on public radio, but I digress). I’ve bought a lot of new age mp3’s based on play they’ve gotten on Audio Visions that I never would have heard otherwise.

Because Audio Visions, Night Visions and Hearts of Space have been cheap auditory therapy for our household I’m pretty fucking attached to the channel which is why I’m freaking out today upon seeing the channel name has changed to read, “Spa (replaces Audio Visions)”. Does this mean no more Hearts of Space? No more vampires reading poetry accompanied by the sounds of trickling streams, heartbeats and twittering birds?

Of course, it’s possible that it won’t change, or that if it DOES change it will be for the better, though I doubt it if their recent broadcast of a muzak-styled saccharine rendition of a sickly sweet piano tinkling the precious Beatles’ melody “In My Life” layered over ocean waves is any indication of what’s to come. Apparently there’s some kind of Sirius / XM merger going on which I haven’t taken the time to read about but is fucking up almost all of the music we’ve been enjoying via Directv.

Note added Aug. 8th 2010: I just found this interesting post on the Hearts of Space website with more information about XM, Sirius (who recently dropped HOS), Audio Visions and Spa.

This is even more upsetting to me than when Court TV changed their channel name to the criminally deceptive “TruTV” and amped up their programming with even more super-dramatized crime and disaster “documentaries” with titles like, “Most Shocking” cops and robbers high speed chases with fake sound effects dubbed in. I pray for media literacy to be taught in this country, but I don’t hold my breath. Don’t get me wrong, I love watching all of that shit, but it pisses me off when mainstream media gets away with passing skewed misrepresentations of real events as “truth” without disclosing how they’ve distorted it with artifice, bias, and added “production value”.

“TRU” my ass! Maybe they think the stupid spelling is enough to act as a disclaimer: TRU! Not true in any boring conventional sense of the word. TRU! Because you don’t have time to squeeze in all of those letters, much less all the pesky facts! TRU! As much truth as we can squeeze in between ads from our sponsors! TRU! For people who don’t believe in accuracy of reporting OR spelling! I know, I shouldn’t take the misuse of words like “reality” so seriously. I guess I’m just old-fashioned that way, especially when I suffer from the double standards that allow television giants to distort and shit all over essential words in our vocabulary while I am threatened with federal obscenity prosecution and having my payment processing taken away if I dare to tell the TRUTH about my body (that blood comes out of my pussy and that’s totally healthy and I can and should be able to have sex with myself and others while that’s happening). Instead I am forced to misrepresent myself, women’s bodies and sexuality by hiding my period on my porn sites.

Seriously, is my bloody cunt more dangerous than using words like “truth” so loosely?
How irresponsible is it to degrade the meaning of words that are supposed to be the cornerstones of civilized ethics? I do not trust that all people will intuitively recognize the difference between “TRU” and “true”, “reality show” and “reality”, or porn pussy and real pussy.

How did this post arrive here? This is why most of my blog entries wallow in draft mode. I’m going to have to start advertising myself as The Naked Non Sequitur. Except it’s not really true that I’m naked right now or even most of the time just because I’m a webwhore, but I guess it’s TRU enough.