Things we can do without.

1. People politicizing the Newtown massacre, if only until after the holiday season. Children were hatefully murdered; please acknowledge & respect that.
2. The entire culture surrounding mental illness in America. Predominantly, I focus on its automatic association with any undesired behavior. Treating every undesired behavior as a symptom of mental illness leads to undesired cultural behavior: anywhere from granting depressed people a get-out-of-work-free card, to violent people a get-out-of-jail-free card. Does no one else find it condescending that people's personalities are being reduced to their psychiatrist's prescribed DSM-pickings?
3. For that matter, we can do without any cultural doctrine that limits the control people believe they have over their own brains. The other day, I read that some people actually believe that it's impossible to fully consent to heterosexual vaginal intercourse, because it's an act women are coerced into by the patriarchy. Now, I don't care if the patriarchy coerced me into feeling this way, but I love me some vaginal intercourse.
4. Everything that happens to one's vagina in the latest stage of pregnancy. All of it. It's like I can't see down there no more so Muffy's decided to have it her way all over the place.
5. I think the dumbest thing in the world is when a girl wears high-waisted jean shorts and a partially tucked-in shirt. Why does some of it get tucked-in?
6. When people use the phrase "look" to describe a woman's clothing & makeup choices. It makes us sound like dolls. You've done something different to your appearance; I love that look on you! I assume that you assume that my shirt has velcro all down the back center, and that my face is frozen in time.

I'm up at 8:43 AM. Do I want to be? No.

     And the post ends here.

Also, while we're at it...

... I think Jemima Kirke is a cool lady, for the most obvious reasons in the world.

Also, I found Not That Kind of Girl's proposal in .pdf form. And it's completely legal. Tee-hee-hee.

Masturhation. Or, How to be justifiably jealous of a girl who's making money writing about herself all day long.

Lena Dunham's lousy book proposal was leaked.
Lena Dunham's lousy book proposal was leaked.
Lena Dunham's lousy book proposal was leaked and I fucking missed it by a goddamned day! Ugh!

Today, I invented a slang: masturhation. A noun--the verb masturhate being derived from said noun.

Everyone does it, but no one's brave enough to talk about it.

Oh come on, like you've never done it. You've never drawn the shades, locked the door, and slipped an extra Xanny-Bar into your boyfriend's mouth for good measure. You've never felt this burning need to just let it all go and feel good and let an explosive release of passion ride out the waves of your fingertips. Believe me, reader: you have masturhated, perhaps in public.

     Masturhation is simple, pleasurable, and personal. Maybe you've been slacking off at the gym, so you go to Wal-Mart and see one of those haggard scooter-souls and think, At least I still walk upright. I unabashedly admit that masturhation is one of my favorite hobbies in the world. Life is a competition that can be easily won with lowered standards. When I clean my house, I watch Hoarders.

     So, naturally, when I heard that Lena Dunham's 66-page proposal for a book she hasn't even written yet was leaked online, I grabbed the Astro-Glide and drew the shades and slipped some Xannies in Sam's mouth--only to find that Dunham's legal representatives requested the proposal be removed. I was preparing for the exact labor-inducing orgasm I need, and now I'm so frustrated I think even my daughter's balls might be blue.

No!

Okay, here's the part where I attempt justifiable jealousy toward a middle-class female creative writing major who's managed fame & fortune by Being Herself all day long:

     Amongst the adjectives used to describe Dunham's proposal was frank. Frank, meaning "direct and unreserved in speech." This woman has made a career scrutinizing her own self, poking fun at her own privilege and creating a character other characters she's created describe as "spoiled." She makes a living off of being completely aware that she would otherwise be incapable of making a living if people didn't pay attention to her. To her credit, there is something admirable about that type of honesty.

     However, what does it say about her "brand" when a gossip website leaks her thoughts, criticizes them, and she has to hide behind litigation to prevent any more people from reading them? What, exactly, is Ms. Dunham afraid of?

     And how, exactly, is threatening to sue Gawker an example of being frank?

Moreover, the fact that I can't find a single Torrent of her proposal, or a page it's on or anything, says something somewhat appalling in this social networking B-story. Everyone was relying on Gawker--and, to a lesser extent, Buzzfeed--as the proposal source. Did anyone save a copy for themselves before it was taken down, or were we just dependent on Buzzfeed for our masturhation?

Lena Dunham needs to not take herself so seriously. You can't portray yourself as someone who writes honestly of what it's like to be a member of the twenty-something creative class, while being too embarrassed of your own book deal to not sue someone when they scrutinize it. Her reaction to the leak only serves to reiterate how she represents a generation that attempts to be provocative but shies away when it actually provokes anything, especially if "anything" happens to mean being called out.

     Ms. Dunham, you are not a representative of my demographic. I would not like to be associated with spending hours self-analyzing and immediately shying away when analyzed by others. I do not want your image to come to mind when I tell people I'm a twenty-something with an interest in creative writing.

But, please, don't go away; I will continue scouring the web, seeking to masturhate to pictures of you looking down your belly-button.

Re: Muncie.

A few days ago, I was at an alt-country--read: hipster country, replete with a folk cover of "All I Need" by Radiohead--show at the Be Here Now, when I ran into a guy named Justin who was personal childhood friends with the guitarist from Butt Funnel. After gushing about how amazing a show their bearded, faux-German ensemble puts on, we got to talking about Madison. Justin, who'd just returned from the idyllic capitol, had no idea why someone who'd been raised there could enjoy living in boring-ass backwards-ass Muncie, Indiana.
     Well, today was why. Here's how someone raised in America's Europe could fall in love with a lousy Rust Belt town:

Today, Sam & I took our buddy Jim to scope out an apartment for him to consider leasing. He found a place on the Southern outskirts of town, in a neighborhood overlooking both horse stables and old abandoned warehouses. The flatness was distinct to the two of us who hadn't grown up with it--and the neighborhood itself was the kind of community where people had cars & campers rusting in their yards, but well-trimmed trees and maintained lawns. It screamed Rust Belt real loud into your ear. It screamed Fucking Muncie.
     The place itself ended up being well-maintained and Jim decided to look into it, but I couldn't get over how delightfully sad-novel the setting was. I said, "This is the kind of place where I'd climb onto the roof, get drunk, and write a bunch of sad Rust Belt novels," and then Sam made fun of me, and we went to my doctor's appointment for this week.

Siren and my snatch have been very business-as-usual. Apparently, when you're as far along as I am, you start losing fluid weight though your baby continues growing rapidly. Debbie the Nurse Practitioner put her fingers up my birth canal and thanked me for being an easy patient. People have conniptions about vaginal exams in the days leading up to them giving birth? She & I then discussed my options for anesthesia.
     On my mother's side, there has only been one woman in my family who received any anesthetic--local, general, or otherwise--during childbirth: my niece weighed over eight-and-a-half pounds at birth and her mother required a c-section. Following that tradition, I've been practicing Bradley techniques at home and am thus far determined to do this Childbirth Thing medication-free. Debbie reminded me that, good health permitting (and likely), I'd be allowed to practice positioning & movement methods, use birthing tubs & showers, and eat light foods during labor. Moreover, being Baby Friendly, the hospital adheres to WHO standards to encourage breastfeeding, unlike so many other hospitals servicing low-income communities.
     In Madison, this wouldn't be an uncommon childbirth--but, in Madison, the cost-of-living is twice what Muncie is. Women who've given birth in Indy & Louisville have told me their birth stories: systematic, clinical, and not without encouraged epidurals. For a woman living around the poverty line, intervention-free childbirth planning can be almost unheard of. In Muncie, it's welcomed by Ball Memorial with open arms.
     I thanked Debbie and the nurses and the secretaries, and Sam & Jim for putting up with me. (You thank a lot of people when you're pregnant.) And the three of us headed to Pop's Junk N' Stuff, where crackheads can sell broken electronics for fifteen cents a chewed-through cord and Jim can buy a television for twenty-five bucks.

My question stands: where the hell else can a punk kid live that overlooks rust and warehouses and horses, buy a pawned-off crackhead television, and receive some of the highest-quality progressive prenatal care in the country? Where? What other community manages to not equate poverty with being impoverished?
     No, I can't buy artisan bread at every stoplight--I can think of only one stoplight, and this might be the whitest sentence interruption ever--and I can't go to a punk show every other night of the week, but I can live simply with the love of my life and our daughter in a way that is both low-cost and low-stress. Someday, I might get real bored and want to leave. (I probably will get real bored and want to leave.) But will I resent Muncie for it? No, and I haven't been able to say that of any other place I've been.

I also learned a new parenting skill today.