Sin City by way of Second City

Last night, a friend and I discovered a delightful little neighborhood bar / restaurant, Fat Cat, which may just become my new go-to place for low-key dinner and drinks. After that, I discovered yet another great thing...burlesque shows! We saw The Flaming Dames in their "Vegas, Baby!" show at The Spot, another local bar / restaurant pretty much down the street from me. I'd never been to a burlesque show before and I've gotta say, there's really nothing not entertaining about comedy, booze, and pastie-covered boobies. A couple of the women were a bit too thin and blonde for my liking but Blackjack Betty and Lady Di made up for it right nice.

Today, I rediscovered why I can't be one of those people who spends their entire weekend drinking because between the copious amounts of tasty Blue Moons consumed and getting to bed at nearly 4 a.m., I've been pretty close to being completely useless. I did, however, get around to finally ordering some dresses online for an upcoming work thing. Every year for their Managing Director meeting, they have it at one of the offices and this year, it's being held in Chicago. This means all of the MDs coming and all of the employees in the Chicago office are treated to a catered dinner on stage at The Pritzker Pavilion. So come June 2nd, I have to get myself all fancied-up and spend the evening wining and dining with company folk. I'm not really looking forward to that as much as mingling with those from work who are actually friends and spending what will hopefully be a gorgeous evening in the park. Here's hoping I'll be stylin' in a new summery, fun, flirty frock!

Hopefully, tomorrow I'll make up for today's laziness by by dragging my ass to the gym, pickin' up my apartment, finishing Snuff, and reverting back to elementary school and writing a little review of it to help me decide if I like it or think it's hideous. I'm about half-way through and am still not really sure what I think of it. Monday, I have an 8-hour hotline shift but being a holiday, I can take it from home, which means I can really do whatever I feel like doing as long as my phone is nearby.

Three-day weekends are lovely.

oh, the joys of my workplace

After a brief lunch discussion with a couple co-workers, when I returned to work, I researched "why they call it going commando" and sent them the following interesting facts about "going commando:"

1. A way for women to avoid having a panty line

2. A way to stimulate sexual arousal without anyone knowing (for girls, at least since we can hide it but you boys are obvious when you get all hot and bothered)

3. Also a term for masturbating (like we need another euphemism for that!)

4. Army explanation #1: Since battle is so intense, they would often "go commando" so that you didn't shit your underwear and could boas that you didn't shit your pants.

5. Army explanation #2: Since a lot of soldiers spend time in tropical, moist environments, they often went commando so they would avoid "crotch rot" and things such as anal itching, chafed penis, jock itch, (and some people believe) infertility.

Which ended with my suggesting that my male co-worker continue to go commando so if he and our IT guy (who I call his boyfriend 'cause I think he secretly wants him) ever decide to plant their seed in a surrogate and have a child, it will hopefully be easier.

Because "Trent, I care about you and your sperm!"

Inappropriateness, thy name is Janelle.

CNN, you're all class, baby

Clinton Hears Sermon on Infidelity

You know where the news is here? No? Are you sure you can't find the newsworthiness here?

That's because there isn't an ounce of it. I'm not a Hillary supporter but I do believe this is Exhibit #43,948 as to just what kind of royal shaft treatment she's getting as a woman who oh my god! dares run for the highest political office in the country.

If Bill hadn't have boinked someone other than his wife 10+ years ago, this wouldn't even be in the news. But since he did, the only possible reason this little tidbit has for existing in the "news" is to further humiliate her.

Here's to you, CNN.

Tools.

bla bla subject line bla

My semi-addiction to all things scentastic finally caused me to cave and try out Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. And if I could sit around all day just smelling myself, I would. Because I want to make sweet, sweet (yet dirty) love to my oils. Today, I'm wearing Lolita, a lovely mix of "glittering heliotrope, honeysuckle, orange blossom and lemon verbena," which makes me feel very...subtly sexy and summery. Tomorrow, I'll test out the Bordello, which smells fucking fantasic in the little vile and hopefully the "bawdy plum with amaretto, burgundy wine and black currant" will smell just as tasty on me. Then, I'll try Perversion, which doesn't smell as much like I thought it would in the vile but once it's on skin, could always be a bit different. 'Cause really, "smoky rum and black tobacco with a whisper of steamy leather with a splash of crystalline chardonnay, layered over a sensual, sweet, and deceptively magnetic base of tonka" has got to be good. The others don't smell particularly fantastic in their viles but I'll try those later too and see.

And now, I twiddle my thumb for the next 8-ish hours or so. Joy.

i better find a beret...

so that I can throw it on and play my part in It's A Small World.

Every few mornings, a guy gets on the bus and I think, "I swear, that kid went to St. Bonaventure." He looks like a guy that hung out with the boyfriend of one of the girls I lived with my senior year. But by the time we get to his stop, the bus is usually full enough that he just pushes his way to the back (as good bus etiquette dictates) but now and then, we look at each other with that, "don't I know you" look. Finally, this morning, he had no choice but to stand in the front and he asked if I went to St. Bonaventure (which of course, I did) and we chatted a bit. Turns out he works at some real estate company in the Loop and like me, keeps in touch with just about nobody from college. I remember him being in our apartment now and then simply because he hung out with Phil (the then-boyfriend of my then-friend) but I don't really remember much other than he was always perfectly nice when he was around.

Neat-o-riffic.

After watching Women's Murder Club last night (not an Emmy winner of a show but delightfully simple and entertaining, along with starring Angie Harmon, whom I believe to be super HOT), I was all excited to curl up in bed and listen to my recently-purchased Counting Crows album, Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings. The idea behind the album is that it's broken up into a Saturday nights section, when one goes out in search of sin and debauchery and then Sunday mornings, when you hope to find yourself again. So I wanted to veg in bed and listen to it in its entirety and in the order on the album. Which Apple could make a bit easier by not automatically alphabetizing tracks on an album. I have to listen to it within my "purchased" playlist and not by its own album, which doesn't really matter much but still...who sits down and thinks, "I'm gonna listen to music alphabetically?" Anyhoo. My stupid ass fell asleep very early on Sunday morning. But from what I did listen to, I still believe the Counting Crows have some of the best lyrics ever put to song.

And so begins my day of twiddling my thumbs with nothing to do at work but wait for my mom and aunt to get here. They're coming for a long weekend and should be at Midway at 6:45 tonight, which means this may be the longest day ever!

a reflection of anger and sadness

Last night at the hotline, we watched Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video, which was fascinating in all sorts of ways.

The cover of the video on that page is a scene in a Limp Bizkit video of a song delightfully titled "Eat You Alive." In the video, Fred Durst has a bullhorn and is yelling at a girl who hasn't returned his lust and forces her to sit there and listen to him screaming out his anger at the situation.

Hey you, Mrs. too-good-to-look-my-way and that's cool you want nothing at all to do with me.
But I want you, ain't nothing wrong with wanting you cause I'm a man and I can think what the hell I want, you got that straight?
No doubt that (no doubt) I'd love to (I'd love) sniff on them panties now....

This is, of course, only up until the sweet part of the song where he romantically sings about just wanting to look at her until she gets a cute sparkle in her eye and is loving it. And then, we return to screaming at her. If you youtube the video and watch it, please take note of the beautiful flowers sitting next to the girl who is out in the forest with a band full of angry musicians and Fred Durst screaming in her face. Gives it a nice, romantic feel, don't ya think?

This is the part where I think, "I'd like to not listen to any and all music that is such complete shit." But holy hell, I'd have to boycott everything but Christian music. In the video we watched, from pop stars to country stars to hip-hip stars, each and every video revolves around the idea that women are:
a. unproportionately physically hot
b. there to please a man
c. incapable of functioning until a man swoops in and fixes things
d. nothing more than something with an ass crack that you can swipe an ATM card through for a laugh (there are a frightening number of videos in which this is done)
e-z: any and all of the other objectifications one can come up with for women

In one scene, we watched different women stand against the wall of a tour bas in either bikinis or entirely naked, while band members and roadies threw lunchmeat at them and laughed and giggled when they stuck to their asses.

Lunchmeat, people. It's apparently the hip rock 'n roll thing to do to open a package of bologna and throw it against some woman's bare ass. It's entertaining. And funny. And a good time. But really, all it is is taking something that's about as non-sexual as it gets and making it sexual in what you really can't argue is anything but a degrading way. Kind of like Led Zeppelin fucking a woman with a frozen fish. Whether the entire thing was shoved in her as some sources state, whether it was shark meat, whether it was just the nose of the fish, whether she was lovin' it or not...whatever happened, I've never nor will I ever, believe it was done for the sexual gratification of that woman. It was done because a bunch of coked out rock 'n rollers thought it'd be fun to use a woman and frozen fucking fish to get their rocks off.

But the point in the video that affected me the most was a single photograph, which I've managed to find online, taken in 2001 during Seattle's Mardi Gras celebration (something I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't even heard of until this video). I'm posting it here because it's been altered to at least protect her identify. And it's powerfully repulsive.

Check out the horror here

Then we cut right back to music videos where the people singing are doing the exact. same. thing. Sure, in videos, the women have bikinis on but really, the touching is exactly the same as in this photograph. It's amazing. Yet in the videos, it's overlooked. Nobody raises concerns when they see rap stars slappin' the asses of strippers and Snoop talkin' about "breakin' those hoes"? Where's the outrage there? In the Puerto Rican photos, a lot of them involve water and women being sprayed with hoses and water bottles, etc. Cut to music videos where women are constantly being sprayed with fire hoses or more often, champagne bottles. Seriously, music industry, I get it...your semen is the most valuable fucking thing out there and there are tons of things you can use in place of it since you can't actually cum on my face to music and sell it as a fucking video. I get it. The entire fuckin' world gets it. Knock it the fuck off.

This is the shit that baffles my mind and leads me to question those things like, "how do I do whatever I need to do to combat that?" What can I do other than write about it and maybe start ignoring most of any music even remotely mainstream (which I kind of do, simply because I don't listen to radio nor watch music videos). I can't boycott everything. And I can't shut myself off to the world nor do I want to. But if that's the case, how do I go about trying to fix it? What the hell can I do to even attempt to start chipping away at something that is so cemented into our culture?

I feel good after I hang up after taking a call at the hotline. I feel good when someone says, "thank you" before we hang up. Because I feel like I've helped, like I've done something. I can't look at that photograph without fighting back tears and I'm not really sure if it's purely because of the image and my inability to understand why the horde of men surrounding the woman look nothing but content and happy. Or because of how absolutely powerless it makes me feel.

perhaps I'm losing my mind...

but lately on the my alumni board, the big "to do" has been this mess about Obama and his pastor. About which my basic feelings are:

- Since when is it my responsibility to make sure someone else thinks the same way I do?
- I have some family members who don’t think the same way I do. Should I write off any and all of their good qualities because of their bad ones? Or because I should be afraid of what other people may think of me for being associated with them?
- Why hasn’t the Catholic church crumbed to the ground in the wake of a bunch of priests jerkin’ off little kids behind the lectern? Because as warped and dangerous as I think it may be, there are plenty of people out there who believe in the message of the church despite whomever "god’s representative" is who is giving the message.

One of the responses to me today was:
Go to Obama's church website, www.tucc.org, then go to the about us, read that, then tell me that it doesn't sound similar to a Ku Klux Klan message.

To which I responded with:
Easy enough. It doesn't sound similar to a Ku Klux Klan message. The message of the Ku Klux Klan is based on the idea that whites are the ones responsible for building the greatness that is this country and that whites should be the only ones to benefit from said greatness. A concept that is inherently false, thanks to the fact that for a period of time, those who did build this country’s foundations were forced to until someone finally spoke up and said, "oh my god, black people are people, not property." Nowhere in the "about us" section did I get the impression this church thinks blacks should be the ones running the show because they deserve it and because they're the superior race. Which is pretty much the opposite of Ku Klux Klan thinking."

Yet another person responded to me with:
So what do you think the headlines would be if a white candidate was a member of the congregation that "trust in God through cultural expression of a WHITE worship service and ministries which address the WHITE Community" It is exactly KKK-ish. It also runs against the premise that the black/African-Americans have been demanding. Equality. Yet this church seeks to specifically separate blacks from other individuals. Apparently, after all this fighting for equal rights, they found out that it was a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence - now that the fence was taken down, they found out its only greener because of the weeds.

What the hell? Am I the only one who sees some similarities here with the whole Bush / Hitler comparison? The simple sight of W’s face makes me violent and I think he’s the most incompetent president this poor country’s ever seen. But I think the Bush / Hitler comparison is kinda nuts. Kinda like this one. In what world does comparing this guy’s church to an organization who, throughout history, has used pure violence to accomplish their mission of racial purity, make any sense?

Is it just me? I’m entirely open to hearing other arguments here so hit me with whatever you’ve got. But right now, I’m just not understanding.