Gaseous Humorous

My dog just farted. It startled him off the couch. He jumped down and started chasing his own tail around. I think his fart confused him which is why he was chasing it around. I posted this once I was done laughing.

Music: Let's Ride by Brother

And the Winner Is...

I heard someone on the phone at the gym recently bitching to her friend about how one of their friends has to everything better including when it came to their relationships.

She started dating someone suddenly her friend is dating someone. Not only that but she made a production on how he was taking her on better dates and doing more romantic things and here’s a bunch of super cute photos of us as a couple and look who’s relationship is on FB first. That last one got her going. Her friend said “It’s not real if it’s not on FB.”

They’re even having a contest over meeting each other’s families. She’s going to brunch with his parents over 4^th of July weekend and guess who is meeting her boyfriend’s folks on the 4^th?

Are you kidding me? High school called. They want their drama back.

This makes absolutely no sense to me. It sounds exhausting and more than a little insane. If shallow women devoted the energy used to compete with each other to better causes, the world would be in better shape.

I never use other people’s relationships as a yard stick for my own. Every relationship is different because all people are different. Comparing and competing undermines both the relationship and the friendship.

Why do women do this to each other? What are you proving? Does your success have more merit because it’s ‘better’ than your friend’s? Is your relationship more meaningful because it got a dozen likes first? How insecure and desperate for validation are you?

If I ever had a friend like a big part of me would want to screw with her. Make up a few things and see what she does. “This [random website] nominated us for couple of the month. Isn’t that great?” “Look at the great necklace he got me just because.” “We just had the most romantic dinner.” Another part would want to be the adult and let it all go. I wonder which side would win…

Music: Look At Me by Geri Halliwell

Meeting the Parents

I’m sure many of you are wondering how meeting Boy Toy’s parents went. It went well. It was his folks, his sister, and a family who used to live in the neighborhood: two sons, the daughter-in-law, and the couple his parent’s age. Everyone was really nice and I behaved reasonably well.

Boy Toy’s mom cooked the crabs live. I did not hesitate to call her a badass. It was really impressive to watch her toss them into the pot. There was also fresh fruit with whipped cream, hamburgers, hotdogs, fancy cheese, and steamed spiced shrimp (a personal favorite). I got along quite well all the other ‘kids’ especially the D-I-L. She gave me her peanut butter pie recipe.

Boy Toy also showed me several childhood photos and looked through the baby book his mom got out for me. Holy crap was he a pretty baby. It wasn’t until around 4 or 5 he started to really look like him. From the pictures he saw when he met my mother, he says I always looked like me. He also dug out some old high school IDs so he could show me his most awkward school photo. He was a pretty cute kid for the most part. You can tell when he hit his awkward phase but that’s true of most of us.

The father of the family friend made sure to tell me Boy Toy is a good guy and I should take good care of him. The unmarried son said he’d known Boy Toy most of his life. I thought it was really sweet he had people close enough to him to say these sort of things. I don’t really have anyone to threaten his knee caps if he’s not nice.

I didn’t get to talk to his mom much and when I said that to her she said “You’ll be back.” Boy Toy told me his folks like me. He’s kind of quiet and shy whereas I’m more outgoing and talkative. Who needs an icebreaker when you have a girlfriend? She thought we were well suited which is an observation I’ve heard before. His folks seem like good people. If they wanted to do dinner sometime, I’d definitely be down.

Music: Galileo (Someone like You) by Josh Groban

Playing Games

So Boy Toy and I have been playing the question game. We trade days on who asks the other a question. There are only a few rules:

1) Don’t ask a question you’re not comfortable answering

2) If you’re going to see each other on your day to ask, you are not obligated to ask a question but you may if you wish

3) You may ask a question you’ve answered just don’t repeat it right away

Yesterday I asked him ‘The Devil has come to collect and you can’t find your chess set. What game do you challenge him to?’ His answer:

Cards Against Humanity. If I’m playing the devil then we’re going full double penetration with Skeletor in a three-way with Helen Keller on a crashing plane waiting to experience survivor’s guilt.

This is a combination of cards played in past games and ideas he has for blank ones. Can you see why he’s alarmingly good at this game? I’m enjoying dating someone who’s slightly more twisted than I am.

Music: LDN by Lily Allen

The Notable, Quotable Caitlin Moran

I just finished her first book How to Be a Woman. Here are some memorable quotes for your enjoyment.

Being polite is possibly the greatest contribution everyone can make to life on earth. –on life

This is like an annual convention for Bad Husband Material. –on visiting a strip club

Personally I wouldn’t spend £21,000 on anything that didn’t have either (a) doors and windows or (b) the ability to grant me three wishes. –on weddings

Do you really want “all the people I love” in one room together? It rarely works out well. –on weddings

When else do you get named something else? On joining a nunnery, or becoming a porn star. As ostensibly joyful celebration of love, that’s bad company to be in. –on marriage

All the other women are “putting together outfits” and “working on their looks.” I am just “putting together the cleanest things.” –on fashion

There are only ten people in the world, tops, who should actually wear heels. And six of those are drag queens. –on wearing heels

If I’m going to spend $500 on a pair of designer shoes, it’s going to be a pair that I can (a) dance to “Bad Romance” in and (b) will allow me to run away from a murderer, should one suddenly decide to give chase. –on wearing heels

Apart from shoes, a handbag is the only item you’re never too fat to fit into. No one ever got dysmorphic or weepy from trying on a tote. –on fashion

When a woman says, “I have nothing to wear!” what she really means is “There’s nothing here for who I am supposed to be today.” –on fashion

Fashion is for standing still and being photographed. Clothes, on the other hand, are for our actual lives –on fashion

Batman doesn’t want a baby in order to feel he’s “done everything.” He’s just saved Gotham again! IF this means that Batman must be a feminine role model above, say, Hillary Clinton, then so be it. –on feminist role models

Ultimately, I think it’s going to be very difficult to oppress a generation of teenage girls who’ve grown-up with a liberal, literate, bisexual pop star who shoots fireworks out of her bra and was listed as Forbes magazine’s seventh most powerful celebrity in the world. –On Lady Gaga

I’ve read more about Oprah Winfrey’s arse than I have about China as an economic superpower –on the media’s treatment of women

In the 21^st century, any woman, succeeding in any arena does not need “humanizing.” There are absolutely not exceptions to this. –on ‘humanizing’ celebrities

I cannot understand antiabortion arguments that center on the sanctity of life. As a species, we’ve fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don’t believe in the sanctity of life. The shrugging acceptance of war, famine, epidemic, pain, and lifelong grinning poverty show us that, whatever we tell ourselves, we’ve made only the most feeble of efforts to really treat human life as sacred. –on abortion

By whatever rationale you use, ending a pregnancy at 12 weeks into gestation is incalculably more moral than bringing an unwanted child into this world. It’s those unhappy, unwanted children who then grew into angry adults, who have caused the great majority of humankind’s miseries. –on abortion

Music: Head Over Feet by Alanis Morissette

Home Sweet Own Book 19

For Bestseller I read Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman. Combination memoir and feminist nonfiction, this was unlike most books I’ve read. A huge hit in the UK, it made its debut stateside a couple of years ago. I didn’t get all the cultural references but I always caught the gist of it.

Reading Moran wasn’t like reading feminist theories or lectures or calls to arms. It was like listening to one of your delightfully crazy friends. She speaks her mind with the candor of someone who doesn’t care what anyone thinks, ever, and does it in a way that is relatable. I never felt preached to or called upon to ‘fight for sisterhood.’ Moran made feminism fun although some of the her childhood stories felt especially awkward at times.

One of my favorite chapters was hearing her talk about abortion. She kept the politics minimal and focused on her reasons and reactions. I am so grateful for her voicing an attitude so rarely heard. I have mad respect for this woman. I liked how she ended on a princess vs. real woman note.

1) Fiction 

2) Nonfiction – The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett

3) Sci-Fi – Redshirts by John Scalzi

4) Fantasy 

5) Mystery – Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer

6) Horror 

7) Memoir/Biography – Data, A Love Story by Amy Webb

8) Chick Lit – Me and Mr. Darcy by Alexandra Potter

9) Feminist – Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan

10) Teen – What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

11) Holiday 

12) Essays – What Was I Thinking? ed. by Barbara Davilman & Liz Dubelman

13) Short Stories 

14) Library 

15) Animal 

16) Book about Books – Judging a Book By Its Lover by Lauren Leto

17) New – Pitch Perfect by Mickey Rapkin

18) Old – Dark and Stormy Knights edited by P. N. Elrod

19) Pop Science – Why Men Fake It by Abraham Morgentaler, MD

20) Near 

21) Far 

22) Graphic Novel – Love and Capes: Do You Want to Know a Secret? by Thomas F. Zahler

23) Reread – Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

24) Wild Card 

25) Otherworldly Creature 

26) Free – Point Your Face at This by Demetri Martin

27) Noteworthy 

28) Bestseller – How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

29) Themed Anthology – Red edited by Kris Goldsmith

30) Steampunk 

31) Movie-Book 

32) Media – Doctor Who: Touched By an Angel by Jonathan Morris

33) Travel 

34) Food 

35) Classic 

36) Humor 

37) Poetry 

38) Past – Stasiland by Anna Funder

39) Future 

40) Dystopia/Post-Apocalyptic 

41) Zombie 

42) Sports

 

Music: Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles