Jess and I were in the process of writing another blog entry about things we hate in other women. We were making a list and a shocking number of them lead right back to one Miss Carrie Bradshaw. If you have never had the pleasure of watching Sex and the City, then you must not be female. Lauded as a great feminist drama, SatC features four friends who fuck like men, but lunch like ladies. You may be thinking “Great, finally the slut myth has been turned on it’s head.” But we’re much more concerned with other ideas the show doles out to its eager fans. Just to get it off our chests, we wrote down what we hate about each of the main characters.

Miranda, the lawyer turned mom: why does she “want it all”? She is a successful lawyer. This has always been her professed calling. All the sudden, she has a kid with an admittedly great guy (beneath her socially and financially, but nicer than most of the douche bags conquests of the cast), and she’s a fucking mess. She’s also seen as the most reclusive and “damaged” member of the cast. She’s not successful because she’s smart and capable, but because she has something to prove to the people around her. She’s also the least likeable character. She should the most likeable, because she is the least overtly stupid. This is not the case. She is a cunt. The message is that smart girls are cunts, and nobody likes a cunt unless they’re actively fucking it. I, being a natural redhead am especially offended: once again a redhead is portrayed as abrasive and short fused. While I admit to getting pissy once in a while, it is usually in response to something, not just over an unsatisfying salad. I don’t know what natural hair color Jess is, but she detests that the most likeable characters are blond.

Charlotte, the pampered housewife: Do not get us started on this bitch. Trying to save a marriage with a limp-dick asshole because it’s what she’s always envisioned for her life. Except, you know, for the fact that he’s awful to her, so is his family, and he can’t get it up. Her mother-in-law’s name was Bunny for fuck’s sake. And she just hops on board that train. Then she meets a nice guy, (her divorce lawyer!) but again, he is beneath her. She had to “give up Christ” for him. Sex and the City sure likes to push the settle-to-be-happy line a lot. Somehow, conversion from Episcopalian to Judaism was a FIVE EPISODE STORY ARC. She immediately assumed she was engaged to him afterwards! When he catches her planning the wedding and calls her out on it, she flips a bitch. She rants at him that he’s oblivious to the fact that she is so much better than him. That is how they briefly broke up! How does that kind of thing happen?

Samantha, the driven nympho: When she got breast cancer, it was the best thing this character did. Did anyone else think the storyline was headed towards AIDS? Because for a woman who blew a random UPS guy in her office, that’s where that train is headed. She has had sex with five hundred people on the show (a conservative estimate by Jess). How does she lead a successful career when her main prerogative is to fuck and suck her way through a fleet of sailors? In her loft, she put her bed in her living room. When you walk into her door there is a giant bed. The producers purposefully did this to show where her priorities lie. They’re in bed…with strangers. We mean, fuck all you want. But don’t expect respect from it, don’t expect to be healthy from it, and don’t make it the main point of your shallow life. This character is the main force behind a generation of women who confuse sex with love, sex with power, and sex with respect. While there’s a double standard between men and women over a high quantity of sexual partners, maybe instead of trying to match inflated numbers, we should try to rise above being sexualized objects. Who’s with us? No, no one? Oh right, we forgot, it’s just easier to be on your back.

Why should we care about your romance if you're both always cheating on each other?

Carrie, the girl next door looking for love: Why does she dye her hair brown when she becomes depressed? She looks better without the peroxide treatment. Are we supposed to feel sorry for her? She makes bad decisions. We don’t understand why the main character of this show has to be portrayed as the weakest of the cast. What is there to offer women when the storyline centers around someone who is shallow and self-involved? They try to portray her as someone who has achieved personal growth, but she is no different from the first time we see her. She just has a wealthy boyfriend/husband/what-the-fuck-ever. She is incessantly needy in every plot line. Introspection in fine, but just because you use a serious voice does not mean the things you say are serious. The pseudo-philosophical tone of all episodes grinds on our nerves. If someone caught one of us having sex with a married man, and we dropped our voice to a serious whisper and said, “For once, two heads *weren’t* better than one… in bed,” you would vomit on us. You would call us a slag and never speak to us again. And rightly so! The only lesson you can actually take from that is to get stronger locks, or, maybe I don’t know, stop having risky sex. Shocker. She actually said “Mexi-coma” and it was supposed to be a joke. Jess’s mom yelled out, in the movie theater, that it was a horrible joke and she should be ashamed. Sarah Jessica Parker, you should be ashamed.

We’re not saying you can’t watch and enjoy Sex and the City, just try and look for the messages this show is feeding you as a woman. We’re sorry, but you can’t fuck your way to equality. Settling for someone you see as beneath you rarely results in a happy and healthy marriage. Using your friends to forget your loneliness still means your life is defined by a man. A baby doesn’t solve your problems and neither do shoes. Watch SatC for what it is: a sexy foray into the shallow waters of a very confused group of clucking hens. But don’t, for the love of the rest of us women, model your life on anything you glimpse there.

One of the hallmarks of my non-traditional upbringing is that my parents had decided not to raise me within a specific religious tradition. They believed that faith was a personal matter and it was not up to them to force a belief upon me. They did make sure that I was exposed to as many different religions as possible. They encouraged me to ask them questions about what I had learned. My mom also has told me repeatedly that they chose to raise my in such a way because they did not want me to ever behave ignorantly when I met somebody of a different faith. This all sounds well and good, and I am grateful that they chose to raise me like this, but it did not sit so well with the vast majority of my very traditional family.

My maternal grandfather was a Catholic, a very Austrian Catholic. My paternal grandfather is a Roman Catholic living in Italy. My paternal grandmother practices Huna, which is a Hawaiian tradition (she is full-blooded Hawaiian, for the record), and my maternal grandmother was a Baptist. I also have several member of my extend family who are Jewish. While there was a great deal of religious diversity, they were all very devout. They all felt that my parents were godless hippies that were teaching me to be a dilettante. Nearly my entire family took it upon themselves to correct their mishandling of my religious education and make me a good proper Catholic…or Baptist…or Jew. The problem was that none of them taught me what that meant, they would just expect me to follow along and practice their faith innately. Only my grandfathers had some measure of success as I have inherited their crushing Catholic guilt.

There was an episode of 30 Rock that mentioned Catholic guilt. Jack told Tracey that no matter what you do, there is always the guilt, the crushing guilt. He exited the scene muttering that he needed to go to confession. I have that crushing guilt. I eat meat on a Friday (they’re those kind of Catholics), and I feel the crushing guilt. I feel the crushing guilt every time I see Senator Palpatine when looking at a picture of Pope Benedict. No matter what I do, no matter how I think, the crushing guilt is always there.

Surprisingly, I have never felt Catholic guilt over how I came to learn how to pray. My Baptist grandmother would always demand that I prayed before I went to bed, but she never taught me how to pray. Yes, apparently there are right and wrong ways to pray. I was doing it all wrong. She walked into my bedroom/hallway where they put my bed while I was praying one night. I was probably about four years old. She walked in to me saying,

“Dear Snoopy, today was pretty cool. Good work on that. The new book that mommy read to me was great, you should read it. Let daddy know that I would like to go to the museum and the park when he comes home next week. Thanks again, Snoopy. Love, Jess.

She was horrified that I was praying to Snoopy and not to a proper deity. I informed her that since there were more pictures of Snoopy in our home than any other deity, I figured he would be a pretty solid bet when it came to praying. Don’t try to understand the logic; I was four. She didn’t know what to say, so she left me to it. She figured that since my parents had decided that they were going to send me to a parochial school, then the school would fix me. Listening in on my bedtime prayers to Snoopy developed into a family pastime and even into a joke. I will always have fond memories of my family gathering around the Easter table and jokingly starting grace with, “Dear Snoopy…”

Dear Snoopy, stay golden.

My mom still holds on to the idea that she made the right decisions in how she raised me. She freely admits that a non-traditional upbringing is not right for all cases, but it worked for us. I would have to agree with her. I am pretty well adjusted, save for some neuroses which would have arisen anyways, and I have a clean criminal record. I asked her if she would have changed anything about my upbringing. She kissed me on my head and told me that everything turned out the way she asked Snoopy for it to turn out. I told her she was gross and then we made pancakes. That’s pretty much the way it goes in my family. We will say something nice, make fun of you and then feed you. Like I said: a wild pack of dogs causing everybody around us to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. Just as Snoopy intended it to be.

-Jess

The hatch has gone by many names over the four years Jess has owned it. Her roommate Scott once referred to the hatch as Gary Coleman, because it is small, black, and deceptively powerful. Sometimes, when we are particularly obsessed with Doctor Who, we call it the TARDIS because it has the illusion of being bigger on the inside. For a long time, our group of friends called it the Bat Hatch and would sing “Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na BAT HATCH!” when Jess would start the car. My personal favorite was calling it Voldehatch and randomly gasping out “THE COMPACT CAR THAT MUST NOT BE NAMED!” Recently, to give the hatch more street cred, we wanted to spray paint the side with the words “Widow Maker”. Jess was afraid, however, that people would assume that her father was killed in the hatch back and she had to continue to drive it like some kind of twisted punishment as specified in his will. She felt as though she needed a signed affidavit from her mother that her dad died years before the hatch rolled off the factory floor.

The Coolest Motherfuckers You Know

One of the best qualities of the hatch is that it never lets us down. In the winter, much like Jess, the hatch is hesitant to go places. It makes a small shuddering whine when you start as though to say, “Do you REALLY need pancakes at 4am? Why don’t you just stay home?” In the summer, the hatch still acts like a new puppy, rambling over hill and dale with no complaints. The air conditioning still feels like angel kisses on our bare arms. The fact that hatch has never once died while we punished her with road trips, late night snack runs, moving residences multiple times, and just plain hiding in her with the heat on at night makes it all the more painful when we see others treat her with less than devoted respect.

While we were on another four in the morning snack run/writing session/hiding from the decent, God-fearing people of the world, we briefly sat under a tree in the parking lot directly in front of where hatch was parked. Like us, there are many social deviants that come to our pancake house, and we had to wait ten minutes for a table. Chatting idly under the tree, we watched a respectable couple in a mid-seized taupe sedan pull in at the edge of the parking lot. Following them was a hot pick pick-up truck, emblazoned with the words “Cowgirl Up!”. A bleach blonde was driving, while leaning most of her torso out the window and drunkenly slurring Joan Jett’s “I love rock and roll”. Besides the drunk driving, the most disturbing part of this scene was that Joan Jett was in fact, not on her radio. She was just belting it out. Jess, a rabid Pat Benetar fan, thinks Joan Jett is a “down-ass cat,” however she cannot stand this song.

The group then collectively shuffled through the parking lot with said bleach blonde stumbling four paces behind. Drunkenly complaining about the shoes she had taken off long ago, she shimmered like a whorish Christmas ornament in her glitter halter top and revealing shorts. How revealing, you ask? We could see bottom ass. The mode age of the group was about forty despite the fact that they were coming from the notorious theme bar Bourbon Street, a fact that did not endear these people to our cynical hearts. The rest of the group reach our vantage point, but the bleach blonde could not muster the coordination to step onto the curb. Instead, she spooned against the hatch and balanced herself onto the stoop. But to our sober eyes it looked more like she was rubbing her vagina across the back and sides of the hatch. She then earnestly looked into our eyes (as hers slightly crossed) and sincerely asked us to enjoy our youth. “You guys, you just have the best life. You have to realize it. You’re only young once.” “Or twice,” Jess sneered and they stumbled into our restaraunt. Jess then tried to convince me that since she embodied everything we hate about the world and specifically our gender, our hatred willed this woman into existence. I openly disagreed until some frat boys in Notre Dame hats with frayed brims walked past, loudly proclaimed that he told his last romantic conquest, “Either fuck me or get out of my room.” And this line WORKED. I visibly recoiled and shouted “Go back to hell, monsters,” because it is now my belief that you can indeed hate someone into existence.

No less than twenty-four hours later, I was at Jess’ ancestral home interviewing her mother for a history project. The doorbell rang and Jess, being a good daughter, ran to answer it. It was her neighbor. This man enjoys drinking beer on the front lawn, playing country music loudly, living in his mother’s basement and proudly displaying a Confederate flag. On the recording I have of Jess’ mother’s wisdom, you can faintly hear Jess crying “NOT MY BABY HATCH!!!” The neighbor admitted that when he backs out of the driveway, he keeps rolling straight back until he hits the tree in Jess’ yard. This time, however, he heard a grinding crunch. So he kept trying. Yes, this actually happened. The hatch had been t-boned by a man who cannot reverse his car while turning. We spent a good chunk of time hugging hatch and apologizing for not being there for her. When Jess announced to her mother that the Confederate neighbor hit her car, Jess’ mom responded “Of course he did. It’s black and foreign. I bet he loved hitting it.”

It was the single most devestating forty-eight hours of the hatch back’s life. But she keeps on rolling us out to shitty diners and for slurpees. And we keep loving her.

Jess and I have fun yelling at pedestrians. I am partial to finding roving packs of teenage boys who call out “pussy!” at elderly couples. Then I scream “ANGEL NUTS!” at them, because they have no pubic hair. For some reason, this is angelic? Jess and I also like to yell at joggers that we like the way their body looks. Sometimes we say it as encouragement, but most of the time it’s just us leering from a dark hatchback window. Once, I saw a pro-lifer cut Jess off in front of our beloved white castle. With bumper stickers like “It’s a baby, not a choice”, “Dear Obama, you can keep your change!” and “For English press one. Para Espanol, go back to Mexico!”, how could I not respond? First out the window was my cola, which was luke warm from YESTERDAY’S visit to White Castle. Almost next out the window was a Thesaurus (invaluable while driving), but Jess told me to use my words. I responded “That is exactly what I’m trying to do!”

Instead we passed her while I hanged half my body out the window and yelled “EAT A DICK, BITCH!” at her passenger window. We assume she shuddered and whispered “But that’s for whores and queers!”

We are passive aggressive, and as such understand if you are, too. If you ever have wanted to ask me a question anonymously, or even ones addressed to Jess, you can do so here.

via papermag.com

Look at that sexy motherfux. My brother recently came home to the Meadowlark from the backwards state of Ohio with a copy of Mr. Ansari’s album Intimate Moments For A Sensual Evening. And it blew my fucking mind. I loved every joke. I have not laughed so hard since Mitch Hedberg, a man who’s death I cried over. In the middle of an interview for admission at a Catholic university. While muttering “Fuck the pope, this is so much worse.” Needless to say, I did not get the scholarship.

But that is how awesome Aziz Ansari is: totally worthy of your tears should he kick the bucket unexpectedly.

Fatties still love him, do not worry

You may recognize Ansari as the fruit merchant on Flight of the Conchords. Or Tom Haverford on beloved NBC show Parks and Recreation. Or as Raaaaaaaandy from Funny People. Or the laziest intern ever on Scrubs. Or his show Human Giant.  Basically any fantastic show you’ve seen, he’s involved in it.

So what else is great about him besides the fact that he’s immensely attractive and manly? Why should you get into Aziz Ansari? Like you, he torments the people he loves. Like you, he thinks kids on MTV are way worse than child murderers. Like you, he has an alter ego who says the most ridiculous, slutty, boner-obsessed things.

Oh, and he has a website:

http://azizisbored.tumblr.com/

Also, Human Giant is amazing:

You ARE HOME.

8:10 PM

The score is 564 to 600. We are losing, but having a right nice time.

9:18 PM

We got our collective asses handed to us. We have found that novelty pop does help the cause.

This really isn’t working. I need Julie here to do this for me. Abandon ship.

Half a second rolled by before I started giggling all over myself as Jess shouted “Writing partners!! We are partners in writing! Not cunnilingus! Writing!”

We promise, dear reader, not to go back and edit our drunken updates.

Hearts and stars, Julie and Jess

“Let’s go, Zack Attack,” Jess said to him, “We want you to bring the THUND-DAH!”

You may think we were being insensitive, as Jess employed her motivational Texan accent and I danced from foot to foot whimpering about my chocolate intake, but we assure you fair reader that we have had our share of shitty jobs. Nothing made us smile more than wacky customers.

Our only regret is that we didn’t party-boy him mercilessly. we love brownies too much.

• I watch Dr. Who, Firefly or an assortment of movies that we own. I refuse to call this a hobby because I think it would kill my mother.
• I read a book, but I won’t call this a hobby either. It is a genuine love. I like to make myself reading lists. I try to work with themes whenever possible. The reading lists are something I am comfortable with deeming a hobby. The current theme that I am working with is “Books that I need to finish either because I started them and got distracted or because they do not belong to me.” I’m currently reading Wuthering Heights because I always get distracted by other books (I’m looking at you, Jane Eyre). I just want to finally read that book straight through without stopping to read something else. I’ve already technically failed this time around because of that rogue, David Sedaris. I’m going to let it slide because I read almost have of Me Talk Pretty One Day while waiting for Julie to get ready. Next up will be Ender’s Game.
• I spend a fair amount of my time trying to teach my bunny tricks. He hasn’t learned anything yet. The biggest obstacle that we have is that he doesn’t want to learn and I don’t want to force him to do something he doesn’t want to do. I mean, he’s a rabbit. He’s not going to give the world cold fusion if I make him learn his science. The best I can hope for is that he can open an envelope or shit in only one corner of his cage. I don’t push the issue because I’m not too good to open my own mail and he can shit where ever he wants to in his own home.
• I make charts and graphs. I do this almost compulsively. It is how I can best understand information. I have passed this on to a few of my friends. I created a line graph for one of my friends after she broke up with her boyfriend. She wanted to know when her relationship ended and I confidently responded, “May 3rd.” It was true and it all made sense. We were able to accurately see that the relationship suffered irreparable damage on May 3rd and never recovered. We continued to graph such things as the severity of the problems that they had had, but the night ultimately ended up with me creating a bar graph of my favorite pies for them to observe.

So this brings us to my current predicament. I am a compulsive charter with a strong fondness for graphs. I graph some useful things. The break-up example is one of them. But I also graph useless things (yes, like the fucking pies). I have graphed the frequency of which I eat certain foods so that I can remember what I put in my gob everyday. I have graphed reasons why I do not like things. I once hauled out every item of clothes that I own and made a pie chart of their colors so that I could decide what my favorite color is (answer: a toss up between green and black. I disqualified black because everybody looks better in black and I have a poor body image, ergo I wear black clothes because they can hide a whole host of evils. Green, therefore, won by default and was closely followed by blue since that is the color of my Pi shirts.)

I have made all of these charts and/or graph in order to answer questions I have had, but today was different. I hit a new low, my darlings. Here is what I did.

"Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks" -Dr. Dre

Yes. I made myself a Venn diagram to visually display a Dr. Dre song. I tried my best to determine what the correct ratio of bitches to hoes to tricks would be and where their logical intersection points would lie. I am allowing a margin of error because this was completed to amuse me for the span of about three minutes. It worked and I am now left with shame. I was about to show a line graph that I had made showing how ashamed I am, but it felt like a bit much.

I really think I should find something else to amuse myself with. I could start sewing again, but I don’t really have the space right now. I have been wanting to learn how to do bead work because I don’t want to spend $50 on Luna Lovegood’s radish earrings since I would have to amend them anyway (my ears are gauged). I know that the Internet will take offense to the projects that I want to make. I want to make radish earrings, a celery stalk broach, and possibly a rabbit bracelet. I will also make him a cicada since he is such a fan of them. I want to figure out how to screen print, but I’m hesitant that I will just make a great big mess. I just really want to make a Tesla shirt. I know how to crochet, but I am too…what’s the word…neurotic for it. I need all of the stitches to be EXACTLY the same size. I think that I will demand that Julie thinks up hobbies for me and then I’ll see how it goes. Just remember, “Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks.”

-Jess

My mother’s oldest sister collects shells. She has been studying them since she was very young and has amassed a rather formidable collection. I don’t understand the need to collect, but I’ve chosen to equate it to Magic cards. It’s always really awesome to open a new pack, and you just might get the card that revolutionizes your deck. Maybe that’s how she feels about shells? My aunt has also been a member of the Chicago Shell Club for more than a decade now.

My mom and my Aunt Sue had to go with her to the recent Christmas party. My mom was feeling ill after dinner, so Aunt Sue suggested that they 86 the rest of the night so that my mom could go home and sack out. They left without saying any good-byes because they did not want to call attention to themselves. I did not inherit this trait from them, and I have elected to co-own a website as a result. My mother is beloved by all who meet her, so there was a woman who noticed her absence. This woman, we will call her Eileen since I didn’t pay attention to her actual name, asked my other aunt about where my mom ran off to during their last meeting. The conversation went something like this:

Eileen: “So where did your sister go during the Christmas party? I wanted to catch up with her because she always has something funny to say, but I didn’t get the chance to talk to her before dinner.”

My aunt: “Oh. Joi had to leave because she was having cancer.”

My eyes lit up like a Christmas tree at this point. My mom and aunt started laughing hysterically as I struggled to find words. This raised a whole host of questions for me. The first thing I was able to say was, “So…did you order the chicken or the beef since mom was having the cancer?” We had an entire conversation about the fact that my other aunt made it seem like cancer is a menu item. My momma wonders if she has five malignant spots because she just had to go back for more. She also asked if having cancer is like eating eggs. You fry some up in the morning, but you’re hungry by noon. Are there times in the day where she is cancer free?

This is how most things work in my family. We either over-analyze the word choices people make, or we have to make inappropriate jokes about situations. We often chose to do both. An example of this would be whenever people ask my mom where my dad is, she responds with “In the grave.” This is why I am an asshole. We just want to know how my other aunt makes her verbal choices. She says shit like this all the time. She can make a statement and we are filled with a whole host of questions.

The lesson learned by this whole encounter is that when offered cancer at a buffet, either say no or don’t go back for seconds. Don’t make the same mistake my mother did. She went back five times. Some people…they just never learn.

-Jess