Orgasm in a bottle.

While at the drug store the other day, I found some bottles of old school Herbal Essences shampoo and conditioner. So I bought them. And washed my tresses with them.

Now my head smells like a 65 year old woman's bathroom. Excellent.

Old Friends

Lisa: Hi, Sleep. I'm Lisa. It's nice to meet you.
Sleep: Nice to meet you too.
Lisa: Wait a sec... you look familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?
Sleep: Yeah, I was gonna say...
Lisa: Wait!... You're that vital biological process that I used to engage in regularly every night!
Sleep: Oh my gosh, you're right!
Lisa: Holy cow, it's so great to see you again. Hey, why don't we hang out anymore?
Sleep: Oh well, you know you started going to college, and I... well, I'm just the fictitious personification of an act. It's hard for me to make these kinds of plans and keep commitments. You understand how it is.
Lisa: Right... Hey! Can we hang out tonight?
Sleep: Actually, I've got a date with Breathing... and you've got that paper due tomorrow. So probably not. Here! Let me give you a couple of my friends' numbers. I'm sure they'd be up for hanging out tonight. Their names are Coffee and Loneliness. They're really cool guys...

A letter

Dear people who walk at an uncomfortably close distance behind me on my way to class,

Stop that! Don't make me get out the bitch slappin's...

Sincerely,
The Bitch

The Best of Times

Today I read 100 pages of "The Grapes of Wrath" and didn't put on shoes... the entire day. Also, there was a thunderstorm. Good day.

Also, I went to Ecuador (not today... but you know, for the last couple of months). You can read about it here.

Heerrrrrrrmmmmm....

Oh boy, oh boy! First post of the year. But I trust that as the river of blog posts has run a bit dry this year, the content quality has more than made up for it. I like to think of quality as the juice of the writing. And I also like to form a visual image of all of my posts as plump and ripe fruits (preferably a drupe, for they are the best of the fruits... and they have a funny name).

Which brings me to the topic of bachelorette parties. And mostly the fact that I don't understand them.

I would like to do a little prologue to this post and note that my sister has recently entered the age in life in which you graduate from college and get married and/or get a job. No, she is not getting married, but all of her friends are. So, you know, I hear a bit about the matter. And I speculate and draw conclusions (or not).

The cases to which I am mainly exposed are good, God-fearing girls who are preparing for a special night. And they do so by throwing a parties clouded with sexual innuendo and jam-packed with "naughty" clothing and novelty items. Okay, it's probably not that bad.

It just makes me question how you can have a celebration where your friends buy you lingerie and karma sutra calenders, and not feel extremely awkward. Maybe I can find some explanation if the parties were originally just some kind of get together that has become warped over the years, but still... a bit awkward.

And then part of me immediately asks what kind of light this view sheds on sex. And then I back away from the loaded, multi-faceted answer... slowly.

So I guess what I'm asking here is: what is the point of a bachelorette (and bachelor, for that matter) party?

Is it to laugh about sex, and serve as a kind of "brace yourself" process? Is it to have the chance to giggle like schoolgirls one last time before you become a woman (whatever that means)? Or is it just a social event that I'm just not getting?

Lesson # 477

Never trust a woman with drawn in eyebrow-penciled eyebrows to wax your own.

Give thanks, dammit!

Thanksgiving is a holiday of lethargy and blah. It's that time of the year we all gather together and give thanks we're not as fat as the that bald uncle who insists that he sit at the head of the table every year.

My aunt put it best when she plopped down on the couch after dinner and declared herself a "beached whale". Which was a completely appropriate description for many of us, on many levels. I consider myself much like a whale in the sense that I feel enormous, much like the mass of a whale, but also by the fact that I feel a little stuck.

I brought home 50 pages of ethics reading and a jarbled page of notes, hoping to get to work on that inevitable final paper that always comes too soon, and I can't do a damn thing. I'm convinced that I've become "beached" on the food, family, readily warm shower water, remarkably soft toilet paper, and overall roominess of non-dorm living. Similar to a beach in its luxuriousness, different in the sense that there is no sand.

I try to understand Republicans; really I do. George Lakoff opened the door for me a bit with an excerpt from his book (link!), but damn them all if they still don't befuddle the hell out of me. It's kind of like (and forgive me for generalizing and simplifying the crap out of this): "Look! There's a man over there who is working 12 hour days to feed his family, has no health insurance, and is still struggling to get everything paid some months. I think I should give him a lecture about the American Dream, and point to radical examples of people who seemingly came out of nowhere to become millionaires! Yes!" or "Let's give the people making a few digits more than him a tax break and wait for the rebates to trickle down in the form of country club golf rounds and italian leather shoes!" or "Hey! I'm a self-made person with an innocent upper-middleclass caucasian background. If I can do it, he can too."

And my theory is that this train of thought comes from over-thinking. Maybe, just maybe if we put that person in the same house or neighborhood as a struggling family, and asked them to stay there for a few hours. Get personable. Sit down, have some coffee. I think there would be some primal form of empathy that would rise to the surface and want this man to have all the means to succeed in life that were available to him. Maybe a tax break. Or some kind of health care he didn't have to pay a quarter of his salary for.

But people are immersed in their own lives. I'm immersed in the noble, self-righteous, typical college student one right now! Maybe what we're immersed in are like little pools. Kiddy pools, we'll say that have a three foot radius and are 7 feet deep. And we're working to stay afloat, but we can see other people's pools. Some closer than others. You can't really get a good feel for what is going on in the other kiddy pools, only what you can see.

So maybe it is better to be beached; to pull yourself out of your safe kiddy pool and flop on the group between the pools. You lose the comfort of immersion, but the view sure is better.