Jumping Off the Caboose

Every minute I spend blogging is a minute I'm NOT spending disaster prepping. I'm just going to come right out and say it: I'm 100 percent fucked when the Zombie Apocalypse comes. There's no way around it. 

But ya know what? Cool. Cool.

The truth is I don't care. I want to care, but I don't care. Like, I'm not remotely prepared for the End Times, the zombies, Hurricane Shirley, Trumpocalypse, or whatever vengeful karma the Universe next unleashes on the human race for fucking everything up so royally, even the saber-toothed tiger and giant sloths which were awesome and why we can't have nice things. Not even glaciers.

I know I'm in the distinct minority here in Alaska. I mean, we have flashlights, CO detectors, and fire escapes, but I'm talking about a more intense level of shit storm. Like I have a friend who's a professional disaster prepper. Among other useful skills, he knows exactly how many pounds of rice and beans our town--with no roads in or out--needs to survive some Jerry Bruckheimer mushroom-cloud type shit for a year. 

Dude's closet has a LOT of rice.

Then of course there's everyone else I know, who is simply an "incidental" disaster prepper. They're ready for disaster even when they're not trying to be. They have a giant garden and three chest freezers full of hot dogs they shot themselves. They know how to drive boats, but if there's a run on gasoline or a riot, that's chill, because they'll make a cruise ship out of a tree stump and start a fire by blowing on two pieces of wet gravel. 

I can't compete with that. I just can't. 

Like, I want to be more competent in this way, but I'm too lazy to learn, and I am officially middle-aged now. I can do some basic shit, like spark up a few twigs with a cigarette lighter and avoid poison berries and stuff. But I vastly prefer my survival activities to be well-planned affairs that involve peanut M&Ms, a water filter, and a USFS cabin receipt in my back pocket. 

Intermittent cell reception also a plus. Just saying.

Anyway, both disaster prepping and beating myself up for lack of disaster prepping come down to a single, narcissistic anxiety fundamental to the human condition: 

Thinking it all ends with you.

Every generation of human beings thinks they're the last one. And one of them will right, eventually. But it's a pretty good bet that statistically no one alive right now will be in it. If I'm wrong, I don't really want to be around long enough to worry about making a cruise ship out of a tree stump for survival reasons, anyhow.

I think about this every time we lose power (like we did today), whether it's caused by an avalanche or an eagle. It's a huge privilege to assume your power will come back because someone will fix whatever the problem is. 

Personally, I'm not counting on anyone else to save me when the shit goes down. Not for a minute. I recognize that I've made my apocalyptic bed out of soft skills like typing, adult coloring, and honing my emotional intelligence instead of learning how to shoot a zombie in the face with a 12 gauge shotgun as he lurches toward me at top speed.

Which is the point I'm getting around to. Who needs empathic listening and gel pens if you're on the caboose of humanity's train? 

Answer: No one. 

So don't worry, my prepper friends, I know you'd help me if you could, but I wouldn't ask you to. Your carefully-allotted cache of Pilot Bread and peanut butter rations is safe, because I am DEADASS jumping off that caboose at the very first sign of a  trestle.

I Want to Find the Loophole in This Rule

Being a lawyer and all, I'm acutely interested in the language and enforceability of rules. Not to second guess someone else's draftsmanship, but I question the number of loopholes and the enforceability of this directive outside the pool in my in-laws' housing development in "Placentia," CA.

As a few commenters have already noted, who HASN'T had "active diarrhea" in the past 14 days? And what is "active" as opposed to "passive" diarrhea? Much less "currently?" How do we define "currently?" And who will enforce this and how?

Ostensibly, the purpose of this prohibition is to limit the spread of waterborne gastrointestinal bacteria and viruses. I'm no infectious disease expert, but I'm pretty sure that it isn't just the "pool water" you need to concern yourself with here.

Like if you fit this description, shouldn't you maybe be at home? Like maybe you shouldn't be entering the pool AREA and touching every surface in sight?

Leave aside the fact that this needs to be said for some reason. Every rule has its origins in a real event of some kind. Obviously, someone in this complex pulled a Caddy Shack/Beverly Hills Cop and made "a mistake in the pool." 

I can remember this happening to a kid at day camp when I was around Isaac's age, and it was like an international incident. When you're a well-cared for six year-old, that's basically the only thing you need to be afraid of, and the sight of a little turd outlined in the butt of this girl's bathing suit is seared into my memory forever.

What is it with pools that promotes shitting so much and directives against it? It's not like chlorine is the same as coffee and a cigarette. 

I don't get it. I'm writing a letter.

I'm Not Here for Gwyneth Paltrow's Anal Sex Advice

I'm almost ready to start an entire separate tag/label on this blog about all the things Gwyneth Paltrow tells you to do with your body (and money) to stay on trend. 

For a full compendium of these directives, please see this most recent post all about how Gwyneth wants you to put an egg-shaped lump of jade in your "yoni" under the light of a full moon for some reason. 

Her other advice includes (but is not limited to) avoiding underwire bras because they cause breast cancer (they don't), and putting olive oil, kale, flax seeds, and a bunch of other stuff from Whole Foods you can't pronounce and that costs half your paycheck into a blender, drinking it, and then sitting on the toilet until next week.

Now Gwyneth--who I've noticed has not recently made a movie at all, much less one in which she dies of decapitation or a rare Chinese bird flu--has some new advice for what should go into your poop chute, as opposed to what should come out of it in a juice cleanse.

London's Daily Mail reports that per the "sex issue" of Gwyneth's newsletter, "Goop," taking it through the back door "is practically standard in the modern bedroom repertoire." 

To be fair, Gwyneth clarifies that  actually, not EVERYONE is doing it, and then reprints her interview with some dubious "expert" on the topic, right next to an ad for "Vanessa High Rise Jeans" for $325. (Hey listen, royalties from Contagion don't exactly cover the cost of your in-home wood-fire pizza oven).

So let's recap: Gwyneth published a lengthy post in "Goop" advising us all to give anal a whirl because it's maybe the bread and butter of 2017 sexy fun times.

M'kay.

At the risk of providing TMI, I'm going to extrapolate from my own experience and posit that anal is not, in fact, "practically standard in the modern bedroom repertoire." 

Quite the opposite: certain sexual adventures are like Derek Jeter or Michael Jordan. They have their moment in the big leagues, and then they retire into the Hall of Fame and you hang up their jersey forever. 

That's anal. Anal is now a color commentator on ESPN who owns a small chain of used Mercedes dealerships somewhere in the Midwest. At least it is for me, though I recognize that doing it in the no-no hole might be standard operating procedure for some women.  

But for most, I suspect, the next time her dude be like, soooo . . .  "Gwyneth or nah?"   

The answer is nah.

OMG This Week Was Like, Soooooo Embarrassing!

You guys. It was suuuuuuch an embarrassing week for SCROTUS. Like, OMG. Seriously it was so embarrassing. First, a unanimous Supreme Court overturned a Gorsuch decision IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS CONFIRMATION HEARING. Can you imagine?!?!? This is like a "Say Anything" column in YM Magazine from the late 80s:

Dear Say Anything,

I was sitting in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, right in the middle of my confirmation hearing for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, when all of a sudden I found out that all 8 justices overruled one of my decisions eight to zero! It was SO totally embarrassing, I just got up and ran right to the bathroom.

Demoralized in DC

Then there was our Dear Leader SCROTUS pretending to drive a truck. I am literally not shitting you when I say that there's an event put on by Juneau Parks & Rec every year where the City brings out the firetruck and the ambulance and the buses and kids climb in them and get to have their picture taken in the driver's seat. I have one of these pics of Isaac in a helicopter from when he was three. FOR REAL.

Then there was this. Ads congratulating Congresspeople for repealing the ACA before they actually did that. I get how this is necessary when two baseball teams go to the World Series, and you have to make up a bunch of shirts even for the losing team, just in case they win. But we're talking about thousands of articles of clothing. These ads take like five seconds to put together and distribute AND you should have a waaaay better idea ahead of time whether you're going to win or not. You'd think you could at least wait until you'd CLOSED THE YOOOGE TERRIFIC DEAL before releasing these stupid ads.

 

Finally, it wouldn't be O.H.M. if I didn't end on my own embarrassment. I totally tweeted my love letter to Ed Sheeran and my offer to have an affair with him and guess what? He DID NOT TWEET BACK to me and his 17 million followers that I'm the most hilarious woman he's ever met and he would totally be my boyfriend if another ginger guitar player hadn't gotten to me first.

SO EMBARRASSING!

To Ed Sheeran, Who Would Totally be My Boyfriend in Real Life

Hi Ed. 

You don't know me, but if you did, I swear you would TOTALLY be my boyfriend in real life, or "IRL" as the kids say.

I had this realization on my drive into work the other morning when I heard your hit song "Shape of You" on the radio. The one you wrote for Selena Gomez but then decided to do yourself, because it has a Van Morrison reference and you were afraid Selena's fans were too young to understand. 

I learned that from Ryan Seacrest.

See? I get you already. I love Van Morrison and know all three of his songs. Brown Eyed Girl is my favorite, with the Moonlight one coming in at a close second. I'm old enough to remember when Julia Roberts made Brown Eyed Girl famous again in Sleeping With the Enemy. Wikipedia tells me you were born the same year that movie came out (1991), but I saw it in the theater. 

It's the one where Julia escapes from her abusive husband by swimming away into the ocean in a thunderstorm as he shouts "LAURRRRAAAAAA!!" over and over again from their deck while shaking his fist at the sky. She ends up in Indiana where she meets this adorbs drama teacher and then the husband comes back to stalk her, and she knows he's been in her house because all the soup cans are lined up in her cupboard and it's super freaky and then the drama teacher helps her kill the husband who you think is dead after she stabs him but really isn't. 

You could be the drama teacher in that particular scenario and I would dance around to Brown Eyed Girl in the kitchen. That would totally be us.

The other thing is the ginger factor. This is the elephant in the room so we might as well get it out of the way. I love gingers! And guitar players! Lots of girls love guitar players but not many girls love gingers. 

Well. 

I happen to be married to a ginger guitar player at this very moment! He's bald now, but he used to be a ginger. You'll be bald too someday, but then you can assert your ginger pride by growing a big ginger beard. TRUST me. You want a girl who isn't scared off by ... well ... you know.

Maybe "girl" is a little generous? After all, I'll be 40 this year and you're 26. But age is just a number, and think of the things I could teach you with my additional 14 years of life experience! It would be like a MILF/cougar seminar at Oxford for 5 credits.

Also your accent is dope, and I believe you would be amused by my American sass. An intercontinental love affair with a married woman 14 years your senior is exactly what you need to inspire your next big hit, "Shape of U2." It will be all about listening to Achtung Baby (which also came out in 1991) while lying next to a woman whose body has been forever ravaged and destroyed--or beautifully blessed, as a feminist doula might say--by pregnancy and childbirth.

Ed, you know you want my love. Your love was handmade for somebody like me. C'mon now follow my lead C-C'mon now follow my lead whoaaaa.

See? I even know the lyrics to one of your songs.

Size of Dead Fish Correlates Directly to Penis Size, Study Shows

We've all known it for years, but now we finally have the data to prove it: The size of the dead fish featured in a man's online dating and social media profile uniformly correlates in a one to one ratio with the size of his penis.

An informal survey conducted by the Center for Marine Biology and Phallic Substitutes released the results of the survey today, which clearly show that be it a salmon, halibut, or marlin, the bigger the fish, the bigger the dick of the man who is holding it.

"We weren't really surprised by this result," said Tom Smith, the researcher who conducted the survey. "It's more or less common knowledge that if you're holding a giant dead fish in your hands on the Internet, you are very strong and masculine, and your penis is extremely large. Precisely as large (inch for inch) as the fish you are holding, in fact, regardless of whether you were the man who actually reeled it in."

Other surveys conducted by the same organization have found in recent years that pick-up trucks and motorcycles also have a marked direct correlation to penis size.

"If a man is straddling a Harley Davidson or standing near the bed of a shiny new pick-up truck, you can consider that proof positive that he's hung like a donkey," Mr. Smith stated.

"It's very important that the public--women especially--be given an accurate accounting of the size of a man's unit," elaborated Mr. Smith. 

"The only effective way to accomplish that is for a man to stunt online with a hyper-masculine object that stands in for the phallus. This indicates in no uncertain terms that the broseph in question is a total badass with a first-rate package, and that moreover, any woman who hits him up will not walk right for a week after she makes the pleasure of his junk's acquaintance."

I Only Have One Problem With "March Nakedness" and It's Not What You Think

Let me be clear from the jump: I have nothing against stripping, or "dancing," as it's euphemistically called at times. I'm all about live and let live: If you want to take off all your clothes and hump a pole while shitfaced dudebros catcall you and stick dollar bills in your thong underwear, knock yourself out, I say. And if you want to do it at the Viking Lounge in Juneau for dudes who just paid a $10 cover that includes a $1 drink--with ladies no cover all night!--then all the better. 

In my personal experience, most women who enter the field of pole-arts have a little bit of baggage to work out, but don't we all? I mean, look at me for fuck's sake! The main reason I'm not stripping is that the amount of money I'd have to spend removing all my fur would be more than I'd make getting naked. It would be a net loss. Trust me.

So again, I'm not judging. At least not for the stripping or the watching of the stripping. I'm judging for the name. 

I feel like the Viking Lounge could have arrived at a more creative name for this event than "March Nakedness." March Nakedness lacks the pizzazz this event so clearly deserves.

Like maybe "March Hotness?" Or "March Tits-n-Ass?" Or "March Nudeness?" Or even "March Nadness?" Although that last one would be the male version. Come to think of it, they don't say it's not coed, although the silhouette on the bill implies it is not, and I've never seen a male pole dancer. Think of the junk slapping against that pole. Not a good look, I'm afraid.

Anyway, "March Nakedness" just sounds so clinical--so slap-dash. Doesn't it? You can't just stick the suffix "ness" on the end of your March Madness-themed stripper show and call it a day!

Go home, March Nakedness. You're drunk.