Be Obscene, Baby, and Not Heard

Fashion matters. Oh, yes, it does. Because it can tell us interesting and often disturbing things about our culture and society.

Take, for instance, the rise of something I like to call Porno Chic. How can you tell if you’re buying into the trend? Parents, take a look at your young daughters. Do you see:

A. Hoo-ha grazing shorty skirts?
B. Belly revealing tube tops?
C. Sucky-sealed blue jeans slung way down low to six-shooter level?

Next, have you yourself become convinced that a new pair of D-cup tits is exactly what your young miss needs to boost her self esteem for her Sweet 16th?

Answer yes to any or all of those questions and you’ve become pornofied, my friend. Corralled out of guilt or ignorance or just downright pure and simple laziness into molding your daughters into commodities for consumption and your sons into their tongue-lolling consumers.

You don’t think that’s happening?

Hmmm. Consider über porn queen Jenna Jameson. This is a woman whose self esteem is so smashed to bits she has dedicated her life to allowing the penetration of every orifice of her body by all manner of objects animate and inanimate. For public viewing. In a recent US Weekly interview Jameson asserted that her recent weight loss to near skeletal levels isn't due to an eating disorder because, you know, like, as a role model for young women she's all about promoting a healthy body image. The interviewer didn’t bat an eyelash. Which leads me to believe that it’s not just Jameson’s self esteem that’s smashed. There, right there, on the floor. Somewhere among those million little pieces are our values, people.

Parents, please. Don’t buy into the trend. Tell your sons and daughters that porn is really all about consumption, and not really at all about sex. That, like McDonald’s, it’s big, big business, elevated to a level of 50 Billion Sold simply because it works as a quick, greasy fix when both money and time is tight. For adults. Not for growing minds and bodies.

Because if you don't help nip this trashy trend in the bud, I can tell you it will not bode well for any of us. Already the ready-to-wear industry seems poised to divide itself into two warring camps: the Kinder-Whore chic of Wet Seal and Charlotte Russe on the one side, and its dumpified, red-headed stepchild backlash on the other:


Shudder.

A New Bite the Apple Feature

Just what you want on a Sunday, I'm sure: a directive. But, I gotta make a few birthday phone calls (it seems almost every member of my family has a birthday that falls somewhere between mid April and mid May), then run the Ivan, then get ready for a fun-filled day with my father and niece. I'm bloggin' lazy this weekend . . .

So I'm introducing a new blog feature I call:

USE THIS WORD

In a sentence. A paragraph. A short-short story. A poem. A haiku. I don't care. Just use it. Then post it in the comments section to prove to me and others just how nimble a manipulator of the English language you are.

Ready? Okay.

The word for today is:
TWEE

Sugar Rush

I have such wonderful friends. I really, really do. They take time out in the middle of the week from their busy schedules to drop by mi casa for cake and chit chat. They bring wine. And Doritos and queso. And they eat my cupcakes and say nice things about them and tell me that, au contraire, and despite the fact that I have been eating cupcakes and frosting all week, my ass is oh so NOT the size of a dump truck. Little liars. But I'll take 'em. Wish the others had been there as well, but I DO live rather far out.

This is COWW girl Doris Rose contemplating the utter deliciousness of my cupcakes:


The COWW girls also brought gifts.

Like this Moon Magnet that COWW girl E! made all by herself. She is so ultra crafty. I am so glad. Because I am not. But I can be a professional appreciator. I can't quite get a good photo of this one, but trust me, it's really, really gorgeous.



COWW girl Doris Rose brought me some delightful, cheery mums. I love mums. All flowers in the daisy family, really. They're just so optimistic. Oh, and all her back copies of Entertainment Weekly so that I would have plenty of crap reading for the weekend.

COWW girl Wicked Thistle brought me blingy beads to hang on my Black Jesus and this:

We all agreed that this is definitely a . . . birka veil? 'Cause, Lord honey, if you're going to take the matrimonial plunge, just cover up that face and pray it all goes well. I made everyone put the birka veil on. COWW girl E!'s expression was the least resigned. I think she looks very lovely and wistful in this photo, as if she's thinking of the man of her dreams and how he may be dreamy now but just wait a few months after he takes over one of the bathrooms.

All in all, a good time was had by all. Or, as COWW girl Wicked Thistle, smart ass that she is, would say:

Come On Party People, Put Your Hands in the Air

Today it’s my birthday. To help me celebrate, a few of my COWW girl friends (remind me to tell you about them sometime) are dropping by this afternoon to help me ingest a mess (mess being the operative word, here) of cupcakes I made last night. I’m sure there will be wine. And also cheese; there always has to be cheese. But mostly, the afternoon will be about the cupcakes.

Because:

A. I love to bake.

B. I am compelled to prove, if to no one but myself, that contrary to certain output, mini chocolate cakes baked at 7,500 feet in the chihuahuan desert can actually be moist and scrumptious. And if they aren’t, I expect my COWWgirls to be true friends and lie to me. Because it’s my birthday.

Unfortunately, S.B. is missing in action. He’s on a job site doing all sorts of Important Things to ensure the Free World As We Know It will be able to wake up tomorrow morning and run their hairdryers. I swear, I'm impressed all over again whenever I stop to think just how imperative he is to the well-run machine that is the Greater Scheme of Things. But I do suspect that he's thinking of me.

And of just how tres chic I look in his birthday present:


What? I can believe what I want. It's my birthday.

At any rate, this day I plan, once again, to be the girl with the most cake. And some day, you will ache like I ache. Because, like me, you will have insisted on eating the entire gosh darn thing.

The Tyranny of Tresses

If I ever get rich, you know what I'm going to splurge on? Not a chef, because I like to cook. Certainly not a housekeeper, that would make me bonkers. And most certainly not a personal shopper, because, where would the fun be in that? No, the one thing I would immediately go out and spend some big bucks on is a personal hairdresser.

There are tasks for which I have quite an infinite amount of patience. Perusing the shoe tables at Dillard's weighing the respective merits of peep toe pumps versus sling back kitten heels. Reading Enlightenment philosophers for clues on how to rule the universe. Baking tray after tray of cupcakes. Working with dogs. But I have about 1.5 seconds of patience for anything that has to do with my hair. I am just so not invested in it. Hell, I even begrudge it the time I spend in the shower washing and conditioning.

About three times a year (what do you guys go more like six?) I manage to haul my ass over to my hairdresser, who does the whole tsk-tsk girl thing with me before expertly scrambling for the power dye and shears. Snip snip blow blow spritz spritz, in a few tortuous hours (during which I am at least able to catch up on some crap reading) I am once again possessed of a perfectly coiffed, perfectly colored head of hair. All day long – and much of the next in fact if I don't wash it – I just thrill myself silly with how super duper magazine cover ready my hair looks.

Until I wash it. Doesn't matter if I memorize every single move my stylist makes with his brush and blower I am never able to mimic his mastery. And truth be told, I wouldn't want to if I could, it just takes so much damn time. So what do I do? I spend the next three months pulling everything back into a ponytail and leaving it at that. So by the time I get back to the salon, it's that tsk-tsk shit all over again.

You know the only haircut I ever loved that loved me back? This one:



I should really give up hope that I will ever, ever be able to make long hair work for me and just go back to my roots.

Boy Bling

This is what happens when little boys grow up. Or, rather, little boys who spend their little boyhood pushing around toy tanks and pick ups, growling vroom vroom in their mock-assertive little boy voices, while all around them little girls patiently wonder why the little boys couldn't for once put down the trucks so everyone could go play shopping. Or doctor.

Some of us big girls are still wondering.



That's S.B.'s beloved Dodge Ram pick up truck. Nicknamed, Big Red. In the ten years he's owned it, he's lifted it twice. While I cannot pretend to understand exactly what that means, I think it basically has something to do with attaching and/or welding some kind of doohicky thingamajig to the vehicle's suspension, then outfitting it with some waaaaaay big tires, thereby raising the vehicle off the ground to such an extent that the resulting driving experience is like trying to maneuver a washing machine on training wheels.

Regardless, you should hear the compliments S.B. gets on his truck. Boys, er, men who would otherwise be rendered mute as door knobs at the prospect of having to compliment a woman on her new shoes or haircut suddenly wax near Shakespearean when in the presence of Big Red.

I know for a fact that if S.B. were made King of the Universe tomorrow his first proclamation would be to lift every single vehicle in existence. Not even Hondas or Vespas would escape. As it stands now, the man can't look at an automobile without calculating its maximum tire size or how high he could hoist it up. A couple times over the years he has even suggested we lift my vehicle. Hell, he would have lifted the Corvette if we'd had it long enough. Thankfully, the dogs ate it.

Like a starlet working a Botox addiction, S.B. just keeps working on Big Red. Until he gets it right. Readers, I give you, courtesy an entire business devoted exclusively to just this kind of thing, S.B.'s latest plans for Big Red. He figures it should all be finalized sometime mid summer:

Let's Talk About the Earth, Baby

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm a day late. I just couldn't face it yesterday, what with the general air of self-satisfied smugness oozing from all those environmentalists' chemical-free pores.

This is what I got to say:

1. The earth is 4.5 billion years old. So far hominids have been here, what, 3.5 million? Do the math. The difference is akin to the affect a pin prick to your pinkey has on the millions of nerve cells in your entire body. The earth was here long before we were. It will be here long after we are gone. We can blast it all we want, but, like the cockroach and dandelion, it will not die back entirely. Until it is ready. Then, it will simply burn itself out. And if you can stop that, well, you must be God.

2. The earth is not static. It is fluid, flexible, ever changing. Hundreds of thousands of species over the eons have gone extinct with no help from us whatsoever. Well, you say, that was Mother Nature working. But isn't Man part of Mother Nature? Were we not created out of the same evolutionary forces? Who made us the sole blight?

3. So does that mean we have license to party like it's 1999 and crap all over our home? Uh, no.

4. But, tell me, who is to blame for our current polluted, denuded, over-cooked predicament? The BIG CORPORATIONS backed by the UNFEELING REPUBLICANS who blithely refuse to be the pusher man for alternative fuels? Uh, no. If you don't think Al Gore et al are just as beholden to their own economic interests as the republicans are to big oil, then I've got some land in a former Nevada test site I'd like to sell you.

5. So who is responsible for our current predicament? We are – that's you plus me. The little guy who packs a powerful punch, whose demand creates the supply. We want to live in 5,000 square foot Taco Bell mansions in the middle of nowhere instead of moving back to the cities and learning to get along with our brethren. We want to breed with abandon. We want to drive our big cars and travel the globe. We want to purchase stuff.

6. Is this right or is this wrong? To me, it's neither. Because I do not believe it is ethical to legislate lifestyle choices or subjugate individual civil liberties in favor of the greater good.

7. Why? Because I do not believe there is a greater good. Again, we face a problem of definition here. Who gets to decide what that good is? Hundreds of people over the ages have tried, not just to define it, but to also put it into practice. Let's trip lightly through a short list of those busy little bees, shall we?

Caligula
Muhammad
Louis XIV
Catherine the Great
Stalin
Hitler
Castro
Pol Pot
Kim Jong-il
George W. Bush

You can put that in your pipe, take it to a public park, and smoke it. Well, uh, okay, so you can't. But you can go clean up your own yard.