I am Woman - Cunt

 

What do you think of when I say "Vagina?"

Oh, right.

A vagina.

Let me rephrase.

What do you feel when I say "Vagina?"

It's an interesting word, isn't it?  Well, perhaps not the word itself, but our reaction to it.

How about "Cunt?"

There's a word that makes you feel all sorts of things, right?

Why, in the Western world, is naming a woman's sexual organs so taboo, so funny, so shameful?

I mean, we all have them, right?

Sometimes I get sick of the shame that society has pinned on the very essence of womanhood.  

I get mad that there is no word for a penis or testicles that is considered as rude as Cunt.  

A few years ago, I went to see the Vagina Monologues in London.  The actresses told us we had to reclaim the word Cunt.  Make it positive.  Make it happy.  Make it beautiful.  They had the audience yell the word again and again and again.

While I was yelling CUNT!  CUNT!  CUNT!  CUNT!  I began to wonder if this exercise would make any difference.  Men around me (the few that were there) were squirming a little, and had lopsided grins on their faces.  Even some of the women were snickering.  I am not sure they were reclaiming the word so much as enjoying the guilty pleasure of yelling it out - like a naughty child.

Ever since then, when someone in my presence uses the word, I counter with:

 "Hey!  A cunt is one of the most beautiful things in the world!"

It usually shuts them up - except, of course, if I'm with my gay friends, who tend to collapse in heaps of sarcastic laughter.

I also try to use swearwords that demean male genitalia, in a one-woman attempt to even the odds.  But they all sounds so... well, facile.  Even flaccid.  

"Dick!"

"Prick!"

"Balls!"

Pathetic.  

The only word that comes close is "BOLLOCKS!"  But it has the added dimension of being foreign in the US - it's peppered, therefore, with an exotic, humorous quality which, again, lowers the impact.

And so I live with the fact that even swearwords reinforce our society's pervasive gender inequality.

But I did discover one good thing through my contemplation of the female reproductive form... 

I saw a documentary on the BBC once, about "Ladies' parts," as some would say in the UK.

For once, I got to see vaginas close up.  All sorts of vaginas.  Large ones, small ones.  Firm ones, soft ones.  

Vaginal lips, I discovered, are as varied as facial lips.  Some are small and firm, while others hang, draping like curtains protecting a wonder behind them.

Of course I ran to get a hand mirror and take a look at mine.  I think it's a strange and empowering thing the first time a woman actually looks at herself "down there."  It wasn't the first time I'd done it, but it was the first time I had something to compare to.

And that is how I came to scare the living crap out of my husband as he came home from work.  He walked in the front door to find me standing at the top of the staircase, naked from the waist down, holding my labia spread apart, excitedly squealing:

"I have a pretty vagina!"

To his credit, and keeping in mind that he did not have any context to frame this behavior, he immediately agreed.

My husband is a really great cunt.

To read more of the I am Woman series, click here.

He Said She Said - Cupcakes

 

"It's a CUPCAKE!" she snapped.

"What is?" he asked.

"A cupcake."

"Um..."

"There's a little paper cup.  In it is a little cake.  It's a cupcake!

"Uh..."

"It doesn't need cream under the icing!  It doesn't need ganache in the middle!  It just needs to be a CUP.  CAKE."

"OK..."

"I don't want the extra calories.  I don't need the extra calories!  I just want to bite into slightly crunchy, sweet icing and then down into a soft, moist cake!  And have it be small, so I can only eat so much of it!"

"Honey?" he said.  "Have you seen the can opener?"

"I AM ON A CUPCAKE RANT HERE!" she yelled.  "CONCENTRATE!"

Silence.

"What is WRONG with these people?  I mean, the clue is IN. THE. NAME!  CUP!  CAKE!"

Silence.

"You're ignoring me now, aren't you?"

"Yup."

"Fine!"

Hell is other people - You are where you come from

Recently I have had a some very interesting conversations with people about ancestral origins.  My theory is that you are where you come from.  Where you originally come from.  

And yes, it all depends on how far back we trace our ancestry, but don't start with me, Pedants.  Use your common sense.  Where are your grandparents, great-grandparents and the generations just before them - who probably didn't move around much - from?

In that information lies explanations about diet, about which times of day you're most energetic in, about all those things you describe to other people in these terms: "that's just how I am, I guess."

It's not how you are.  It's who you are.

Fluffy Bear's ancestry is Irish.  Meat and potatoes is what he loves, is what his body thrives on.  He does well in cold temperatures - but not too cold.  He melts in temperatures over 36 degrees C.  

My ancestors come from a tropical island, where the races are French, Indian, Chinese and Creole.  There was no land to farm beef or lamb.  But the island was ringed with ocean, and there were sugar cane fields and rice paddies.  Give me a plate full of rice covered in spicy lentils and I'm happy.

A few months ago, a friend told me a story about a couple who adopted a child from Korea.  They were vegetarian and they brought him up with adequate protein - just of a vegetable variety.  But, as he got older, he got more and more unmanageable.  He got kicked out of kindergarten.  He threw temper tantrums.  Most frightening of all, he deliberately hurt a small animal.  They were worried they had a young Jeffrey Dahmer on their hands.  

They were told to give the child medication.  Being the vegetarian hippies they are, they researched alternatives (and quite right, too).  They found a nutritionist, who explained to them that to feed a child of Korean ancestry a vegetarian diet is anathema to his metabolic system.  His tradition is to eat meat and his ancestors have evolved to do so.  They way his body converted food to chemicals was different to how his parents' bodies did, and there was some kind of chemical that his body was not able to make without eating meat.  Because of eating the wrong diet, he was literally chemically imbalanced.  They changed his diet and he turned out just fine.

I was at happy hour a few weeks ago and told this story to a vegetarian.  He literally laughed in my face.

It was a very difficult moment for me.

I strongly believe in people's right to choose.  Abortion, gay marriage, poly-amorous relationships... you have the right to do what you want to do, as long as it does not hurt anything else with a fully developed brain. 

But we cannot deny who we are biologically.  

If you choose to be vegetarian, and it hinders your health - either physically or psychologically - you have to admit you were wrong and factor complex proteins back into your diet.  You can source them ethically these days.

And if you want to know who you are biologically, go back to your roots.

I grew up in South Africa.  My parents come from a sunny island.  I take 4,000 units of Vitamin D a day, I have consistently tested under the norm for two the last two years, because I now live in a grey, gloomy place.  If I didn't consider the prospect that I get SAD in winter, I'd be a complete fool.

I know the person who laughed at my hypothesis isn't a representative of all vegetarians.  Any named group - be it religious, racial, sexual-preference, diet-preference, political - hell, even a book club - has a diverse spectrum of people in it, even though they market themselves as a homogeneous entity.

But his attitude really pissed me off.

To not consider the fact that there could be people who are simply not suited, biologically, to his dietary life choice, was narrow minded.

Yes, my evidence was anecdotal at best, but counter my proposal, give me your hypothesis.  Don't laugh at me and pat me on the arm like I'm a two year old who just said that I am going to marry my daddy when I grow up. 

I could make a facetious comment about his being too mentally tired to debate due to protein deficiency, but I choose to rise above that.

Nevertheless, my theory still stands...

Hell is other people.

Workplace Personalities - The Golden Child

You know the type I'm talking about.

He always looks good - even on dress down Fridays the T-shirt he wears is uberkewl.

He never says the wrong thing. 

You're standing between the cubes, it's Friday afternoon, and everyone is laughing at some story or other.  Team member one make a slightly dirty - but very funny - comment, and team member two counters with something just as dirty and just as funny.  The Golden Child opens his mouth and you think - finally! - he's going to say something non-PC.  He takes a breath in... then stops himself.  His self-control never wavers.

If you pass his desk and look down at a presentation he's prepared, you realize that is work is annoyingly, bafflingly, utterly impeccable.  He's managed to fit research, options and ROI onto one sheet - in color. 

"How does he do it?" you ask yourself.

• Does he work from home every night?
• Does he have better experience or education than I do?
• Does he have an abnormally high IQ?

You watch him in meetings, trying to follow his train of thought and how he got to that excellent question, that perfectly phrased feedback.

You have conversations over coffee, asking him advice, telling yourself you can learn from him, he can mentor you, even if he is seven years younger than you are.

You try to find out his secret, his method, his Mojo. 

But nothing works.

He just is.

He's a phenomenon, slipping like 4 stroke oil through the corporate machine, fitting in with everyone and everything.

And you hate him.

With a passion.

Key signs:

• Workplace Mojo
• More workplace Mojo
• Even more workplace Mojo

Catch phrase: There isn't one.  Depending on the situation, he just always says exactly the right thing.

Your strategy:

 Try to imitate.  Asking for advice directly is a waste of time.  I'm not sure even he knows how he does it.  If you have to, write down what he says so you can later copy his turn of phrase.  If you can, work for him.  Hitch your career to his wagon - he's going places.

Their comeuppance:

 There isn't one.  This guys climbing the ladder, Baby.  Upwards and onwards. 

To read more in the Workplace Personalities series, click here.

You might like:

• Lil Miss Congeniality
• The Ninja

Being a Doggy Mama - Another Lost Dog

 

We found another lost dog last weekend.

We were driving along and he ran across the road right in front of us.

Having seen a dog run over and killed a few months ago, Fluffy Bear is very sensitive to this stuff, and immediately pulled over.  

I called the dog and it came to me, very friendly.  It had a collar, but no tags.

We put it in the car, in the back seat because our two crazy mutts were in the back of the SUV, and headed up to the nearest vet.

I've been to this vet before and the receptionist totally put me off registering there.  We still go to our old vet close to where we used to live.  He's worth the drive.

The receptionist was just as rude and incompetent as when I'd first met her.  She was clearly not interested in helping us, and kept scanning only one spot on the dog's back.  Fluffy Bear tried to explain to her that our dogs have their chip in their shoulder, and asker her to please move the scanner around, but she just kept waving it at a spot on the top of the dog's neck, saying that there was no chip.

She was utterly useless.

We put the dog back in the car and decided to head down to the Animal Shelter.

The dog was very sweet, very well behaved and sat down quietly next to me.  This was clearly someone's loving pet.

At the Animal Shelter we met a very nice English Vet Tech who helped us out.  She took out her scanner, waved it and it went BEEP in less than 5 seconds.  I swear to God!  She found the chip right away.

She also realized that the number, being 15 digits instead of 10, meant that this was a foreign chip.  Apparently America uses a different standard to the rest of the world for dog chips.  No comment.

Anyway, she said she'd trace it and we left the dog in her capable hands.

Two days later, we were driving past the Animal Shelter, so we stopped in to see what had happened to the dog.  

And here's the crazy thing.

The couple had come into the shelter less than an hour after we dropped off their dog, looking for it.  They had just moved to town, and they are English!

So everyone involved in this story of the lost dog has a British accent!

No wonder the dog came to me when called!  He was probably thinking:  "Oh yes, you sound right.  Unlike all the other strange hairless apes I've been around for the last two days!"

Imagine how freaked this poor dog was.  He had just been on an 8 hour flight, come to a very strange place and then got completely lost.  

We were so happy to hear this story had a happy ending.

Hell is Other People - Honking Wanker

 

Fluffy Bear and I have decided that there is something about us.  We have a magnet for lost dogs.

We were on our way to our local coffee shop today when we saw a dog, another Weimeraner, lolloping along a busy main street.

There was a guy walking by it and we asked him if it was his.  He said no, but he was on the phone with Animal Control.

I called the dog and it came towards me.  It had no collar, so I caught it but couldn't hold onto it.  As it came near Puppy Dog, it freaked out, so it pulled away, toppling me over.  I hit the road pretty hard on my knee.  I have a lovely bloody scrape now, reminiscent of when I was a tree-climbing, Hide-n-Seek playing child.

(Hello, Neosporin.)

I kept calling the dog but it ran across the road, in front of a Land Rover.  Thank God, the woman in it stopped in time, and saw what was going on.  She stopped, got out of her car and asked me if it was my dog.  I explained what was going on.  She got hold of the dog but, like me, was struggling to hang onto it.  I asked her if we could please put the dog in her car.  She said yes immediately.

So the guy who was on the phone to Animal Control, the woman in the Land Rover, myself and another couple who were walking dogs were all stopped, talking about what to do.  The Land Rover was still stopped in the middle of the street.  She had had to stop there to avoid hitting the dog in the first place.

I was explaining to the woman that, last weekend, we took a dog to the Animal Shelter and they scanned the chip and the dog was back with its owners in an hour.  I was trying to convince her to do this because she was talking about taking the dog to her vet and that made me think she was going to keep it overnight, today being Sunday.  

I didn't think this was a good idea, especially since she said she had two dogs.  The lost dog was already freaked out - we all agreed it probably ran away because it's Seafair today and the Blue Angels jets were zooming by, very loudly, overhead.  It didn't need to spend the night in a strange house, and its owners would have 24 hours of pain and worry.

So, anyway, we're all standing there trying to establish next steps.

And some moron comes along and honks at me because he has to overtake the Land Rover and I am standing a foot into the street on the other side, making his passage through a little narrower.

Now, here's the thing.  You're driving along a main suburban street.  It's a Sunday.  There is a car stopped in the middle of the road.  5 people are standing around, all clearly discussing something.

And you overtake, get mad, and HONK?

You're a fucking Arsehole of the First Degree, a Pillock of the First Class, a Dickhead of the Smelly Smeg!

I don't have to tell you, do I, that I yelled my head off at him.  If I hadn't been dealing with the hurt knee, I swear I would've run after him, hit his car, made him stop and gone Full Crazy Bitch on his ass.  Trust me, with an English accent, it can be very, very effective.

Damn!  Now I wish I had done that.

Ah, well.

The Land Rover lady connected with the guy on the phone to Animal Control and decided to go to to the Shelter.  So hopefully this will all end well.

Oh, and just by the way, the people that left their dog without a collar on, on Seafair afternoon, when there is a cloudy sky and the Blue Angels are obviously going to do their low flying show, are arseholes too.

Hell is other people.

Dear Diary - Wonderfully Wistful Walk

 

Dear Diary

I had a lovely walk home from work last night.

For some strange unknown reason, I got a 2nd wind at around 4:30pm - after feeling tired and drained all day - and ended up working till almost 7pm.

Now that I no longer work in the Hellhole, leaving the office that late is a rare thing.  But it's summer in the Northern latitudes, and that means a light sky and a balmy breeze at 7pm.

iPhone streaming the Beatles Pandora station in my ears, I headed across the bridge to start my journey.

I try to enjoy my walk.

There are a myriad of routes I can take home, and I try to turn a different way each time.  I slowly wend my way through semi-suburban blocks and parks, heading in a vaguely diagonal direction.

I stop to gently sniff roses hanging over people's fences, and try to pay attention to the rainbow of flowers along the way.

 

I look up to see the pattern of the day painted by the clouds.

There are many grasses and hedges that people use to border their properties, and I let my hand stretch out to feel their spiky stickiness, or soft woolly touch.

Sometimes life surprises me and I get to see a hummingbird, or a butterfly.

And, of course, I smile widely at everyone's dog.  

Sometimes I forget that there is an owner attached... one notable moment being me saying "Hello Handsome!" quite loudly (remember I'm plugged into Pandora) to a Golden Retriever attached to a man who was somewhat taken aback by my greeting - until he saw I wasn't looking at him.

Walking home is the perfect way to unwind from a day at the office.  Annoying meetings, empire building colleagues and the ever growing task list melt away when I pass two women in downward dog on a grassy hill, or smile at a little boy with a flaming shock of red hair waving shyly back at me when I flap my right hand at him like a crazy lady.

Sometimes, life is good.

[ICYMI] Hell is other people - A Fall

In case you missed it...

This is a repost.  This was originally posted Sunday, March 22, 2009 at 4:09PM.  But the thing with blogs is, new people find them all the time, and who the hell has the time to search through all the crap I've written in the past?  So, now and then, I'm gonna regurgitate some of it for you.  Think of it as happy vomit.

 

 

 

"So," the massage therapist said, reading my intake form, "you had a fall?"

I answered with a monosyllabic affirmative, but a thousand thoughts were going through my head.

A FALL?

Since when am I old enough to have A FALL?

Why am I freaking out about this? Simple. The way in which we describe an unintentional rapid communing with the ground beneathe us is one of those little things that changes as we age.

For a child or toddler, we make light of the fall, scooping them up and making high pitched noises that communicate to them that it is nothing to be worried about. After all, children are as strong as cyborgs and bounce like rubber balls.

Hence:

"Did you go boom? Huh? Huh? Baba go boom-si-daisy? Oopsie! Boom-boom! Oopsie!"

When we are kids and teenagers the key is to cover up our deep embarrassment at drawing any attention to ourselves and pretend the entire thing never happened or, if you are quick-witted enough, turn it into a clever joke.

Hence:

"Dude, you just totally kissed the sidewalk!"
"Goddamn! Did you see that? I just ducked and rolled like James Bond, Yo!"

When we are adults, we tend not to fall, unless we are drunk, which is funny in anyone's book. No need to comment, just giggle and guffaw along with anyone who happened to see you.

But then old age sets in. The muscles waste, the skin bruises easily, the bones are fragile. Falling down turns into a major hazard, a source of real injury and possibly even a trap, if you can't get up again. At worst, it can compromise your dignity and become the final straw that sucks up your last vestige of independence, leading to constant supervision and a sense of being a burden till the Grim Reaper comes. It also becomes a conversation point that can last for weeks, especially in the lives of those who are no longer very active and therefore make a lot out of a little.

Hence:

"Did you hear? Mary had a fall."
"No! When?"
"Last night. She got up to go to the bathroom."
"Is she hurt?"
"Oh, yeeeeessss. They found her on the floor this morning when they went in to help her dress. She had peed herself."
"They'll be transferring her to the main building soon, she'll be with us!"
"Well she won't be sitting at my table at dinner time! She smells of cigarettes!"

And so, maybe I'm being a bit paranoid here, but I have always dreaded getting to the point where bumping Mother Earth was described as a fall.

In fact, when Puppy Dog pulled me over yesterday, I was pretty impressed at how quickly I bounced back up and how I didn't feel terrible afterwards. Even this morning, when I woke up and couldn't move my neck, I decided all I needed was a good massage and I'd be fine. I was handling it.

Till that skinny little bitch spoke to me like I'm an eighty year old.

Worse still - and I am not exaggerating - she gave me the worst massage I've had in years.

Hell is other people.

[ICYMI] Couch Potato - Showgirls

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In case you missed it...

This is a repost.  This was originally posted Saturday, April 4, 2009 at 5:32PM.  But the thing with blogs is, new people find them all the time, and who the hell has the time to search through all the crap I've written in the past?  So, now and then, I'm gonna regurgitate some of it for you.  Think of it as happy vomit.

 

 

 

 

 

I recently saw the most misogynistic, facile, puerile piece of excrement ever to grace the movie screen.

 

Showgirls.

  

Here is a sample of the script:

 

Our "heroine", Nomi, is at lunch with her nemesis/mentor/potential lesbian lover, Cristal. Nomi is a new chorus dancer in the topless horror of a stage show, Cristal is the "star" who emerges, almost naked, from a fake volcano.

Nomi Malone: [befuddled by the fancy menu and sarcastically referring to the diet prescribed by the manager of the dance troupe] Don't they have brown rice and vegetables?
Cristal Connors: Do you like brown rice and vegetables?
Nomi Malone: Yeah.
Cristal Connors: You do?
Nomi Malone: Sort of.
Cristal Connors: Really?
Nomi Malone: It's worse than dog food. [Cristal laughs]
Nomi Malone: It is!
Cristal Connors: I've had dog food.
Nomi Malone: You have?
Cristal Connors: Mmm-hmmm. Long time ago. Doggy Chow. I used to love Doggy Chow.
Nomi Malone: I used to love Doggy Chow, too!
[Cristal and Nomi toast each other with their potato chips.]

And, trust me, the rest of it is even worse.

The only way to tolerate this piece of crap is to laugh at it, and that's what David Schmader does.  He is a Showgirls officionado, and gives live commentary throughout the movie.

At the moment pictured above, he said:

"There isn't enough Purell (hand santizer) in the world!"

Classic.

He Said She Said - Food Network

 

 

 

 

 

 

They were watching a Food Network show about Mexican Cooking.  It was early in the day, and nobody had had any coffee yet.

 

 

"Who the hell is this?" she yelled from the kitchen.  "Is this someone from Food Network Star who's auditioning to actually get a real show on the channel?"

 

"No," he yelled back from the living room.  "It's a real show... about Mexican cooking."

 

"She sounds terrible!" she yelled.  "She isn't convincing me at all.  There is no way she has girlfriends coming round for lunch.  In fact, I doubt she has any friends at all!"

  

"You are so mean!" he said.  "I guess this is why her show is on at 6am.  See, now you're making me think like a Next Food Network Star judge," he said.  "I keep thinking things like 'That looks like a mess' and 'There's nothing original about this dish!' "

 

"I know," she replied.  

 

"So she's been saying that this cake recipe is something everyone used to ask her mother to bring to parties.  But the recipe looks pretty easy to me.  Do you think maybe the family friends were saying 'Hey, just tell her to make that cake again.  I'll make the Mole, you make the tortillas... let her do something she can't fuck up.' "

 

"Oh now who's mean?" she laughed.

 

"She's putting the mixture in a bundt tin!  I hate those things!" he yelled.  "My mother brought one back from the US when I was a kid and I could never get the cake to come out whole!  It has so many ridges that the cake just sticks!"

 

"Well watch how she does it," she said, pointing at the TV.

 

"She USES HALF A POUND OF BUTTER TO GREASE IT!" 

 

"Well there you go," she smiled.  "You learnt something new today after all."

 

"Oh, shut up," he said.