Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Groping: an intellectual analysis. On Friday night I was packing to go away for the weekend and I realised how much weight I've put on. The old jeans I bought in 2003 that fitted me fine last year, and were a little bit tight in March, are now way too small for me. What was my favourite dress this time last year now requires safety pins to make it sit flat between the buttons. This made me unbelievably sad: the kind of helpless sadness that comes from realising something you ought to have realised long ago.
The last time I had an organised exercise kick was in 2005, after Bo had told me, in one of his characteristic moments of tact, that if I wanted to get laid I would need to lose weight. That time I walked and ran in Royal Park in the early mornings, wearing a stopwatch and trying to beat my previous circuit times. After some early success I lasted a few weeks. You know how it goes. One morning it's raining, or you were up late last night, and you break your routine, and you get to thinking, life is so short, surely I should enjoy its pleasures rather than endure its miseries.
This time I have decided to walk to and from work. So far I have done this twice and it takes 40 minutes. Unlike running in circles or swimming back and forth, I don't have to reserve time from my day to do it and it actually serves a practical purpose. I am finding it pleasant so far. It overwhelms me to consider the Herculean task of improving my shithouse diet or curbing my incipient alcoholism, but I figure that 80 minutes exercise per day is a start.
It is ridiculous to try and set goals for myself because I know how little it takes for me to fall off the exercise wagon, but ideally I would like to be able to wear my clothes again without shame by the end of the year. I am recording this for posterity, not to receive advice, and I will delete any comments offering diet and exercise tips.
Anyway, let's move on from this surprisingly longwinded unpleasantness to the real topic of this post. Yesterday I was pondering how people decide to grope others in drunken social situations. What are the groping thought processes? Are you a situational groper, for instance: someone hott walks past and impulsively you grab their arse? Or are you a curious groper: a thought suddenly pops into your head, "I wonder what her breast would feel like?" and you can't resist finding out? Are you an accidental groper: you lose your footing and put your hands out for balance and... oh noes! Or perhaps you're a socially unskilled groper, and your groping is flirtation gone awry.
What does groping 'mean'? You can argue that it's about aggression; you invade someone's personal space to assert power over them. Perhaps it's about tactility; you want to know how someone's body feels under your hand. Perhaps it's admiration: you want someone to realise that you appreciate the way they look. Or maybe it's intimacy; you feel entitled to touch someone without asking because you feel you know them well enough.
The last time I had an organised exercise kick was in 2005, after Bo had told me, in one of his characteristic moments of tact, that if I wanted to get laid I would need to lose weight. That time I walked and ran in Royal Park in the early mornings, wearing a stopwatch and trying to beat my previous circuit times. After some early success I lasted a few weeks. You know how it goes. One morning it's raining, or you were up late last night, and you break your routine, and you get to thinking, life is so short, surely I should enjoy its pleasures rather than endure its miseries.
This time I have decided to walk to and from work. So far I have done this twice and it takes 40 minutes. Unlike running in circles or swimming back and forth, I don't have to reserve time from my day to do it and it actually serves a practical purpose. I am finding it pleasant so far. It overwhelms me to consider the Herculean task of improving my shithouse diet or curbing my incipient alcoholism, but I figure that 80 minutes exercise per day is a start.
It is ridiculous to try and set goals for myself because I know how little it takes for me to fall off the exercise wagon, but ideally I would like to be able to wear my clothes again without shame by the end of the year. I am recording this for posterity, not to receive advice, and I will delete any comments offering diet and exercise tips.
Anyway, let's move on from this surprisingly longwinded unpleasantness to the real topic of this post. Yesterday I was pondering how people decide to grope others in drunken social situations. What are the groping thought processes? Are you a situational groper, for instance: someone hott walks past and impulsively you grab their arse? Or are you a curious groper: a thought suddenly pops into your head, "I wonder what her breast would feel like?" and you can't resist finding out? Are you an accidental groper: you lose your footing and put your hands out for balance and... oh noes! Or perhaps you're a socially unskilled groper, and your groping is flirtation gone awry.
What does groping 'mean'? You can argue that it's about aggression; you invade someone's personal space to assert power over them. Perhaps it's about tactility; you want to know how someone's body feels under your hand. Perhaps it's admiration: you want someone to realise that you appreciate the way they look. Or maybe it's intimacy; you feel entitled to touch someone without asking because you feel you know them well enough.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
The erotics of hard rubbish. Clem Bastow has started a Facebook group about hard rubbish and I think I might have found my spiritual home. But most of all, I am realising just how much I'd love to go on a date with someone that consisted of waiting for the cover of darkness before rummaging through piles of other people's discarded stuff. Jeremy has thought of a sexploitation film called Hard Rubbish. He even has the perfect tagline: "What you gonna do with all that junk?"
Did you know that I actually once went on a hard rubbish date? I've been on Camberwell Market dates too - this was with the same dude. We went a few times, actually - he got lots of analogue electronic equipment to make his experimental music and I got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirts and old hip-house cassette tapes with titles like Rok Da House. He was embarrassed because the stallholder gave me the t-shirt for free because I could sing the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. I later gave the t-shirt away at my own Camberwell Market stall to someone else who could sing the song.
But the hard rubbish date was awesome. I don't think we even found anything. We just roamed around North Carlton one night. I remember that it was freezing and I kept my hands jammed in my pockets most of the time. I totally want to do it again. Maybe we could make out on someone's discarded brown velour couch.
EDIT: 11:06PM THAT SAME EVENING... I am so excited I can't sleep. Jeremy and I just went cruising North Carlton in his Saab for hard rubbish. (Jeremy is my Claytons date: the date I have when I'm not having a date, even though this is also true of most dates I think I'm on.) And there were heaps of other people doing it too: in cars like us; on foot with torches; casually, while walking dogs.
We spotted a couple of hippie girls cheerfully carting away an armchair, and a bourgie lady with an armful of picture frames, and every time we exchanged knowing glances at each other. A taxi stopped and let its headlights illuminate a pile of rubbish. We stopped at one point to let a ute pass; then we saw the same ute a few streets away with a clothes dryer in the back. These were professional hard rubbish scavengers.
Jeremy said it was like a zombie movie and at any point we could expect to encounter a group of people on hands and knees going through the rubbish with their mouths. But I think it was more like Party Crashing: there was a weird sense of combined competition and camaraderie, and I liked the way me and Jeremy worked together to spot and search through the rubbish.
If I had done this on an actual date, right now I would be so up for sex I can't tell you.
Did you know that I actually once went on a hard rubbish date? I've been on Camberwell Market dates too - this was with the same dude. We went a few times, actually - he got lots of analogue electronic equipment to make his experimental music and I got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirts and old hip-house cassette tapes with titles like Rok Da House. He was embarrassed because the stallholder gave me the t-shirt for free because I could sing the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. I later gave the t-shirt away at my own Camberwell Market stall to someone else who could sing the song.
But the hard rubbish date was awesome. I don't think we even found anything. We just roamed around North Carlton one night. I remember that it was freezing and I kept my hands jammed in my pockets most of the time. I totally want to do it again. Maybe we could make out on someone's discarded brown velour couch.
EDIT: 11:06PM THAT SAME EVENING... I am so excited I can't sleep. Jeremy and I just went cruising North Carlton in his Saab for hard rubbish. (Jeremy is my Claytons date: the date I have when I'm not having a date, even though this is also true of most dates I think I'm on.) And there were heaps of other people doing it too: in cars like us; on foot with torches; casually, while walking dogs.
We spotted a couple of hippie girls cheerfully carting away an armchair, and a bourgie lady with an armful of picture frames, and every time we exchanged knowing glances at each other. A taxi stopped and let its headlights illuminate a pile of rubbish. We stopped at one point to let a ute pass; then we saw the same ute a few streets away with a clothes dryer in the back. These were professional hard rubbish scavengers.
Jeremy said it was like a zombie movie and at any point we could expect to encounter a group of people on hands and knees going through the rubbish with their mouths. But I think it was more like Party Crashing: there was a weird sense of combined competition and camaraderie, and I liked the way me and Jeremy worked together to spot and search through the rubbish.
If I had done this on an actual date, right now I would be so up for sex I can't tell you.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Not being sure if it's a date is the new dating. Eat your heart out Samantha Brett, you utter retard. For I am about to turn my mighty intellect to the question of whether a pretty man has actually asked me out or not. You see, I tend to think I am on dates when in fact the other person thinks we are "hanging out" or "networking".
I went on the maybe-date in question last Saturday night. Damn, this pretty man is fine. But tonight I texted him that I am going out to see another band. He asked which one and when I told him, he didn't reply. Perhaps he thinks I have lame taste in music. Or perhaps I am foolish to think it was a date when his friendliness might just be politeness. He certainly seemed interested in what I do; perhaps he wants a writing gig. It makes me sad to think that pretty men are only interested in me because of my job.
There are times when I feel awesome about myself. And then there are times when I see photographs of myself, drunk and wearing a toga, and go, "No, I don't think it was a date."
Today I was at the shops and as I was on the escalator, I was hit by an intense feeling of wanting to cry. It felt exactly like a wave of nausea: the body's unbidden, animal reaction that the conscious mind has to fight. I rode it the same way, going "Don't cry, Mel, don't cry" to myself much as I'd will myself not to throw up. The urge passed and I felt the same kind of spent relief that accompanies a victory over vomiting.
I went on the maybe-date in question last Saturday night. Damn, this pretty man is fine. But tonight I texted him that I am going out to see another band. He asked which one and when I told him, he didn't reply. Perhaps he thinks I have lame taste in music. Or perhaps I am foolish to think it was a date when his friendliness might just be politeness. He certainly seemed interested in what I do; perhaps he wants a writing gig. It makes me sad to think that pretty men are only interested in me because of my job.
There are times when I feel awesome about myself. And then there are times when I see photographs of myself, drunk and wearing a toga, and go, "No, I don't think it was a date."
Today I was at the shops and as I was on the escalator, I was hit by an intense feeling of wanting to cry. It felt exactly like a wave of nausea: the body's unbidden, animal reaction that the conscious mind has to fight. I rode it the same way, going "Don't cry, Mel, don't cry" to myself much as I'd will myself not to throw up. The urge passed and I felt the same kind of spent relief that accompanies a victory over vomiting.
Saturday, August 04, 2007
A genealogy of penile-themed spam. Back in the day, you used to get spam promising to increase the length and girth of your cock. Not owning one, I found this sales pitch especially riveting.
You will be absolutely amazed when you see your penis gradually becoming LARGER and LARGER, right before your eyes! NOTHING compares to the feeling of having a larger penis. We recommend you to take two tablets once a day, after a meal. No, MegaDik Pills do not cause any known adverse side effects.But I was always amused by their emotionally manipulative tactics - rather than wanting an enormous cock for your own edification, it was always, "Don't you want to satisfy your woman?"
Girls lie when they say "size doesn’t matter" that’s just to make us feel better, The truth is they want their partner to have a huge one, and they will keep searching until they find it! Now you can be that big man with the new improved and doctor recommended enlargement pills, click here to get your supply before they sell out!Then they started to promise that you would last really long. Like, after buying whatever it was, you would just fuck for many hours. Again, this would please your woman (though possibly not after many hours). But now, I am beginning to notice that they are promising large volumes of semen. Behold!
Boytoys always whizgiggled at me and even fellows did in the public toilet! Well, now I smil at them, because I took M_E_G. ADI. K for 7 months and now my peter is much weightier than federal.What is so good about more semen? It makes sense within the visual language of porn, but for the ordinary person it would seem more inconvenient than anything else.
Achieve the feeling of complete ecstasy while having ball blowing orgasms. This is an experience like no other!
Wondercum consist of two sets of herbs, one set helps testes to product more sperms with improved quality and the other set of herbs makes you calm and relieve stress, a prerequisite for desire and arousal.
On emollients. Lately I have become obsessed with Palmer's Cocoa Butter. I used to go past it in Priceline and take advantage of the testers, but baulk at paying the price. But then a couple of days ago I bought a bottle only to discover, to my horror, that I'd got the fragrance free version. Honestly! you buy Palmer's so you can smell delicious. And then I went back yesterday and bought the regular, delicious-smelling version.
As I caught the tram to work yesterday, applying a new coat of lip balm, I began to think about emollients. What does an emollient do? It softens. It smooths down the epidermis to make the skin look and feel soft and supple rather than rough and scaly. But to what purpose is this softening? Whose eyes and hands are meant to appreciate your emolliated skin?
I know that etymology is such a red herring, but I do find it interesting that 'emolliate' also has the phallocentric implication of 'soften': "to render effeminate". As in the matey way of telling someone who refuses to test their limitations that they are a "soft cock". And it also has the diplomatic sense of 'mollify' - to "smooth things over" and relieve a situation of tension.
The routine act of applying creams and lotions to the skin makes you conscious of what your body is to you. My own body has always been a source of despair to me: either betraying me with its repellence, or being ignored altogether so that I feel like a brain with typing fingers attached. Even though in this situation you might be expected to cherish your own body (as nobody else does), it only makes me cherish it less. I have never really bought into routine shaving, waxing, moisturisation or tanning. I mean, I realise that, as a self-respecting heterosexual woman, I am supposed to be into these things, but I just can't internalise the need to do them for the purpose of abstract 'self-maintenance'. (I'm sure Foucault would be some help to me here, but I have never found the intellectual energy to tackle The Care of the Self - right now I'm stuck on a relatively slim volume of gossip-and-conspiracy-theory-as-epistemology called Knowledge Goes Pop).
When I emolliate, I have always seen it as a kind of priming or preparation: I am grooming my body for specific occasions. Perhaps the idea of routinised daily emolliation is a way to string these 'occasions' together so that every day contains the potentiality of 'occasion' without anticipation. (Paging Glen, paging Glen.) I emolliated good today. I emolliated my entire body with delicious cocoa-buttery goodness. Perhaps an occasion awaits.
As I caught the tram to work yesterday, applying a new coat of lip balm, I began to think about emollients. What does an emollient do? It softens. It smooths down the epidermis to make the skin look and feel soft and supple rather than rough and scaly. But to what purpose is this softening? Whose eyes and hands are meant to appreciate your emolliated skin?
I know that etymology is such a red herring, but I do find it interesting that 'emolliate' also has the phallocentric implication of 'soften': "to render effeminate". As in the matey way of telling someone who refuses to test their limitations that they are a "soft cock". And it also has the diplomatic sense of 'mollify' - to "smooth things over" and relieve a situation of tension.
The routine act of applying creams and lotions to the skin makes you conscious of what your body is to you. My own body has always been a source of despair to me: either betraying me with its repellence, or being ignored altogether so that I feel like a brain with typing fingers attached. Even though in this situation you might be expected to cherish your own body (as nobody else does), it only makes me cherish it less. I have never really bought into routine shaving, waxing, moisturisation or tanning. I mean, I realise that, as a self-respecting heterosexual woman, I am supposed to be into these things, but I just can't internalise the need to do them for the purpose of abstract 'self-maintenance'. (I'm sure Foucault would be some help to me here, but I have never found the intellectual energy to tackle The Care of the Self - right now I'm stuck on a relatively slim volume of gossip-and-conspiracy-theory-as-epistemology called Knowledge Goes Pop).
When I emolliate, I have always seen it as a kind of priming or preparation: I am grooming my body for specific occasions. Perhaps the idea of routinised daily emolliation is a way to string these 'occasions' together so that every day contains the potentiality of 'occasion' without anticipation. (Paging Glen, paging Glen.) I emolliated good today. I emolliated my entire body with delicious cocoa-buttery goodness. Perhaps an occasion awaits.
