One D at a Time

Pot Psychology Is Back!

Check out our latest installment, featuring Susie Bright!

Putting a Face to a Crime

When I saw the police photo of Rihanna taken after Chris Brown (allegedly) attacked her, I said, "Oh shit" out loud. I work from home, alone, on the internet all day. When I think something's funny, I don't laugh. I type "haha" or "lol" into iChat. When something pisses me off, makes me sad, excites me, confuses me; my emotions and my reactions to them remain equally virtual. But my response to Rihanna's injuries was visceral. And I immediately recognized the value in that.

My mind is in my laptop for long stretches of time, which causes a disconnect—from my own body and others. It results in desensitization and, more importantly, a lack of face-to-face human interaction. After a while, you forget how you got there, and why you never mind to stay. Facing Rihanna's bruises humanized the situation for me. I no longer felt disconnected.

I was late to the party on the whole pre-Grammy altercation, due to a self-imposed exile to Mexico in an attempt to escape from relationship problems of my own. With no internet, television or tabloids, I didn't even hear about it until several days later, at which point, I didn't care. I thought it was just some more celebrity bullshit and purposely didn't read any reports or gossip on it, assuming they'd be speculative, inaccurate, and invasive of something that seemed to be a private matter, believing that nobody really knows what goes on within a relationship unless they're one of the two people in it.

I hate the idea of jumping to the automatic conclusion that women are either victims or potential victims. It implies that we're weak, unable to take care of ourselves, and need men to protect us from…men? Without knowing any factual details or the extent of either parties' injuries (beyond conjecture)—and knowing my own behavior when fighting—I didn't want to assume that Chris Brown was evil and that Rihanna was completely innocent, which I'm sure that some people did, based solely on gender. I particularly didn't want to do that, so long as Rihanna wasn't saying much about it.

But, you know what they say about what a picture says…

Riding On The Love Train

I wrote about this documentary about Objectum Sexuals (OS people) for Jezebel called Strange Love: Married to the Eiffel Tower. OS people (who are all women, btw) have intimate, emotional, sexual relationships with inanimate objects. It's the best thing I've seen in a long time, and probably ranks right up there, for me, with Living Dolls and Grey Gardens, particularly for how quotable it is. For example, one woman—who looks like a run-of-the-mill bull dyke—named Amy is in love with an amusement park ride named 1001 Nacht. While standing next to the structure, she began explaining, to a fellow OS person, her lovemaking process with the ride saying, "When I start climaxing, I keep saying to him over and over, just as I'm startin' to go over the edge, I just tell him, 'I want your fluids. I want your fluids. I want your fluids.'" I love how clinical her dirty talk is. Anyway, you can watch the whole documentary online, and I put a clip up on Jez as well, but here is an additional clip that I have been watching repeatedly, in which Amy is freaking out to the Eurotrash song that plays loudly while the 1001 Nacht is in motion. Enjoy.

3 Things I Didn't Know

1.) Fat Free Fiancés is a television show.
2.) Ann Coulter's breath smells like white wine.
3.)

I Drink Because It's Fun, Not Because It's "Feminist"

Have you seen this retardation in New York magazine? Apparently women are drinking more these days. And apparently it has something to do with feminism. And women like me and my coworkers represent that kind of feminism. According to dickish comments on some blogs, because we drink (sometimes in excess) and openly discuss it, we are ruining feminism.

When the fuck are people going to understand that what Moe, and I and the rest of Jezebel do—when we write about—is anthropological, not ideological?

The fact that women like to knock a few back is not a pro-feminism statement. Sure, it may be a result of feminism, but not, in itself, a feminist act. (Personally, I don't drink to fight sexism. I drink to forget about it.) However, making the argument that now that women are lucky enough to have the freedoms earned by earlier feminists, we should forever be indebted to them and pay homage by being responsible and striving for social perfection is, in fact, an anti-feminist statement. Because we're not "lucky" to have such rights. We're owed them. And so, what, now that we have them we better behave?

It's the same fucking thing that feminists/women have always faced: being told "you can't." But now it's been switched up—within our own ranks—to "you can, but you shouldn't," as this smart lady pointed out. So who exactly is the Aunt Tom here? Us for the sad state of feminism at happy hour? Or them for trying to tack on so many other issues to this movement that it's so heavy it's stuck right where it is?

The article discussed the "Thinking and Drinking" thing that Moe and I did, and published a private iChat conversation between "two editors at Jezebel."

Electile Dysfunction

The first time I was eligible to vote in a presidential election was in 2000, and I was living in London. I was so pumped about it that I actually went to the trouble of sending in an absentee ballot. I heard that they don't even count those until like five days after election day or something, but it didn't matter to me because I felt like a grownup and I felt like I was making a difference in the world.

Except that I wasn't making much of a difference at all. I voted for Al Gore, who won the popular vote and he still wasn't elected. It kinda took the wind out of my sails, but not enough for me to not vote in the next election. In 2004, I was living in the U.S. again. I got this mailer thing that told me which poll site I had to go to in Greenpoint. When I showed up to the basement of a middle school in my neighborhood, my name wasn't on the list of voters, so I was given this Scantron sheet instead of going in a booth. The 90-year-old Polish woman working at my poll site gave me an ink pen to fill in my circles.

I was like, "Um, I think these only work with pencils."

She said, "I give you pencil right here."

I was like, "This is a pen."

She nodded her head and smiled.

I tried to explain more, but she put her finger over her lips so as to shush me and then hobbled away. I started to mildly freak out, thinking that this stupid idiot old lady was gonna fuck up my vote and George Bush would most definitely get elected and we'd get in all these new wars and the world would fall apart.

If my vote wasn't counted that night, it didn't matter. New York went blue, as it always does. Maybe that old Polish lady wasn't so stupid after all. Maybe she knew it was pointless, and that's why she didn't want to walk her old legs around the room looking for a pencil that wouldn't change a single fucking thing. So that's why I'm wondering if I should even bother schlepping to the poll.

You Wanna Be On Top?

I can't fucking believe I forgot to mention this, because it was the highlight of my month. Rich and I filmed an installment of Pot Psychology with two America's Next Top Model Cycle 10 alums, Lauren and Amis (whose real name is Amy, but Tyra made her change it because there was already another Amy). Check it out here.

Making a Ho a Housewife

This is going to ruin my reputation as a slut.

Reader Mail

I get a lot of email from readers, and most of it is really nice and supportive. (I suck with correspondence. I have voicemail and email anxiety, so I rarely ever get back to people. Sorry.) But I get plenty of assy emails, too. It's completely beyond me why someone would want to take time out of their day to email a complete stranger to tell them they don't agree with their lifestyle. Like, do they really think that they'll have some kind of an impact on me? That after all the shit I've written on this site, their poorly-crafted email will change my life and my entire way of thinking, like, "Oh, yeah, I guess I am an immoral whore who should be ashamed of herself."

Sometimes the emails—like many of the trollish comments on this site—really remind me how close-minded, prudish, judgmental, and fucking sexist some people are. I received a string of emails recently from one such person, and I decided to share them.

There's No Such Thing as a "Bad Feminist"

I do not believe in a utopian sisterhood. I think that by saying you don't want to take other women on, you are essentially saying that you don't find them to be worthy competitors. So I don't particularly mind when other women dispute my beliefs or the things that I say—so long as they don't hurl rude, unnecessary, or irrelevant insults, like about my STDs, the way I wear my hair, etc.—because I recognize that I throw a lot of shit out there that's not exactly crowd pleasing. What bothers the fuck out of me, though, is when women accuse other women of being bad feminists. That simply does not exist. Because it doesn't matter what you think about women's issues, just as long as you're thinking about them.

On Responsibility, Role Models

Everyone has their drunk days. Some of us just don't exploit others' for professional gain.

Source

Rape Can Be Boring

Ugh, this Monday sucked So. Much. First, Time Warner in Brooklyn got completely shut down for a while, making it impossible to do my job, which meant that I'd actually have to get out of my muumuu, take a shower, and drag my ass into the city to work at my company's new office, which I've never even been to. I walked into my bedroom to get dressed and saw that there was liquid all over the floor. My first reaction was to blame the dog for pissing, but I noticed that there was just way too much fluid, and I looked up to see that water was pouring out of my ceiling, and the ceiling was actually like falling apart and shit.

So then I had to get on the horn with a plumber, who wanted to charge me $125 an hour just to look at the fucking mess, then I had my editor on the other line, who wanted me to dictate the text of my post to her, so she could throw something up on the site during the internet outage. Everything was so hectic for about an hour. Then by the time I got on a pair of ratty jeans and a T-shirt, the internet was back. Then I went to take a piss and saw that I was spotting, which is totally weird, because I just finished my period a week ago. I'm thinking it was from the stress. Oh, and I didn't even mention that I'm in the middle of quitting smoking and was on my third day of Zyban/Welbutrin.

The Fear of Being Alone

I think I'm so into anatomical abnormalities like conjoined twins because the nature of their physicality automatically brings up questions about subjects I'm particularly interested in like sex, honesty, bowel movements, and the meanings of privacy and loneliness. That said, I'm way into the Schappell twins (pictured above) for reasons beyond those I listed—which I'll get to in a minute—but let's just start with their country music video:

420!

Happy 4/20! I've actually never really been the type to like go all out of 4/20, or even remember to celebrate it at all. I don't take getting stoned that seriously—although now it's kind of part of my job, so I guess I sorta do. So, as part of that, we made a special 420 episode of Pot Psychology, featuring Gavin McInnes as Jambi the genie.

High Again

I posted a new installment of Pot Psychology that Rich and I shot over on Jezebel last week, and in typical stoner fashion, I forgot to post it here. Oops. I answered questions about tight vaginas, security deposits, and hooking up with coworkers. Anyways, enjoy!

A Breakdown in Communication, Part 2

OK, so the dude that I wrote about who sent me that series of bizarre and inappropriate MySpace messages is totally freaking out right now. And you know what that means—more messages and emails! He's pissed because I posted a screen shot of one of the messages he sent me. I blurred out his name and picture, but he's like completely bugging because he seems to think that people can see what it says or make out his face. The thing is, the only people who would figure it out are people who know his MySpace page really well. People like his girlfriend I guess? I mean, it's not like future employers or whatever are reading the archives of this blog, looking for blurred out thumbnails that resemble him. Anyway, here is the first of the new batch of messages he sent me:

8:45 AM
Subject: Picture
Can you just take my picture off of your blog?   It could really fuck my life up.

I ignored it. And he didn't like that one bit.

Stoner Advice

So, I have this column on Jezebel called Pot Psychology, in which people send in questions and I answer them while stoned. It had always been a written column before, but this time around Alex Goldberg and I made it into a video, which co-stars Rich. Anyway, go check it out.

Kokie Monster

Everyone heard about Kokie’s the same way: “Hey, have you been to Kokie’s? It’s a COKE bar called KOKIE’S!”

Vice just published a great oral history on one of my old haunts—Kokie's, a bar on Berry and N. 3rd that served low-grade cocaine out of a "DJ booth," and sometimes, alternately, a utility closet. (The location is now a bar called The Levee.) I mostly went there circa 1999 - 2001. It was about a tenth as classy as the picture above would indicate. I seem to remember dirty walls and folding tables and chairs in the back room. There would usually be Hispanic people dancing to like salsa music or something along those lines. In the front, on the bar, there was a water cooler and little plastic cups for all the people who were there to blow the last of their evening's cash on blow. I actually would never really hang out there. I was always quickly in and out, because I was often by myself, and well aware that I attracted the wrong kind of attention. That was back when I was really into dressing like a party extra from Bachelor Party, so I was usually in fishnets, fake lashes, a ratty rabbit fur coat and a pleather skirt. I looked like a hooker straight outta 1984.

A Breakdown in Communication

I get some strange emails from people who contact me through this site. None of them really affect me.  (Well, except in the case of this one lesbian/tranny crazy druggie weirdo who was harassing me online for a bit before she/he/it was apparently committed to some kind of institution.) For the most part, I tend to be contacted by dudes looking to get laid because they assume that I'm a sure thing since I write about how I like sex. Actually, here's some kind of SMS with a phone number attached that I just got today.

"A tell me wat u think of my dick i need a girls oppinion im 18 i would like it if u could send me a pic of ur pussy im into phone sex if u want to exchange pics"

I mean, this could be spam. It's always kind of difficult to discern between real emails and sex spam, because a lot of the content is totally relevant to me and what I write about. But something about this tells me it's real. Seriously though, for the record, just because I like fucking, doesn't mean that I like fucking everyone.

Anyway, I recently received a thread of messages on MySpace from a guy that I slept with a handful of times seven years ago. He was always socially awkward, to the point where it was kinda painful to experience. And it looks like some things never change!

Mr. Telephone Man

I've been meaning to discuss this commercial for a long time. It's for Red Hot Dateline, which apparently is a cross between phone sex, an escort service, and casual encounters for men seeking women whose main selling point is that they're local. However, if the commercial is to be believed, it's really for braless immigrant gym bunnies who have nothing better to do than voluntarily meet strange men in a motel room.

Dear Mommy and Daddy

Please do not read this page! I'm begging you. Read the stuff on Jezebel. Thanks.

I got a call from my dad this morning. It's the first time I've heard from either of my parents since my picture was posted. I didn't tell them about any of it, but my dad reads Gawker every day so he found out that way. He said, "I saw that moniker of yours, 'Slut Machine.' Jesus." Then he chuckled, but like in an embarrassed way. Still haven't heard from Teesh (that's my mom). More to come on that.

Meet Dana

Cokane (red shirt) had a going away BBQ on Saturday because she's moving to the deep south this week. It was bittersweet—we had a lot of fun and laughed really hard, but we're all gonna miss her a lot. It sort of marks an end of an era. Everyone's moving away, or moving in with with BFs, or getting married. Everyone's growing up. Well, actually, not everyone. Drunky Brewster's Calisha Jenkins (far left) and Dana (the chick on the ground) are holding it down. I've never told you guys about Dana before. All I have to say is: Don't threaten her with a good time.