Adios, Amigo

Yesterday, Mr. Man had an assignment (have I mentioned that Mr. Man is a schoolboy?) to write a bunch of aphorisms. In the midst of digesting the fact that Lambda Legal, a self-described LBGT legal defense fund, has ads running on Perez Hilton (who I've finally decided is too ignorant and transphobic to read anymore--read on), he decided to write some about the unspoken "lessons" one can learn about our culture from visiting Perez's site. Here's how our our gchat went:

Mr. Man: ow lambda legal is advertising on perez

me: omg

fucking idiots

!!!

???

that's cuh-razy

right?

3:26 PM Mr. Man: ya- it's crazy- but not too surpising

me: ya

no it's kinda smart

but not really

Mr. Man: there go the raises for thier employees....

me: pretty fucked up

no shit

not to mention who they're endorsing by their presence, and who they're targeting

3:30 PM Mr. Man: i am writing aphorisms inspired by perez hilton

me: haha yay

3:34 PMMr. Man: Things that could be learned from reading perezhilton.com

1. The young are the powerful, because they are beautiful, but the old can have power too if they get plastic surgery and/or have money.
2. Some women who are not transgender look like transgender people, and this is shameful.
3. A worthwhile cause is only worthwhile if it is endorsed by a celebrity.
4. What the rich and famous do is more important and meaningful than what everyone else does.
5. Everything is secondary to visual beauty.
6. Celebrity pop culture is nothing more than sensationalized mundanity.
7. Sarcasm is the best way to both make fun of and idolize people at the same time.
8. People who used to be celebrities, but aren't really any more are both funny and pathetic.
9. Appropriation of a radical queer style is okay if you are gay man, even if you are pretty mainstream, aside from your gay-ness.
10. Subscribing to strict gender roles is important is you want to be a celebrity- it's okay to be gay, but not too gay.

In one of my very first posts, I mentioned Perez Hilton and how I hated to love him but couldn't help it because he shared my love for Beth Ditto. Even back then, Mr. Man (the rascal who got me hooked on celebrity news, darn him) and I had noticed a disturbing habit Perez had of making fun of trannies, but we kind of just cringed and shook our heads in that "I'm disappointed but not really surprised" way, the way we did when that dumbass Dave Letterman (who I've always loved more than Conan or Leno) disappointed me so much a few weeks ago. Sometimes I'd post comments about how fucked up it was that PH would be such a hypocrite, not because he's gay, but because sometimes he champions the rights of trannies (or pretends to), most recently in response to Letterman's insensitive and trans-phobic remarks.

I should acknowledge that it's pretty fucking ridiculous that we visit this site at all. The whole celebrity thing is ridiculous, and although I like to tell myself that I need to know this stuff for work, or to better understand the mainstream, but I would have to admit that part of me enjoys it, in spite of being totally disgusted. It's like Diet Coke.

It's not just the trans stuff, either--Perez makes fun of people like Tina, the young girl who PH made famous for videos of herself dancing to pop music in her bedroom, who did appear to be homophobic, but is just a kid (who seems to have a learning disability of some kind). And he definitely tends to humiliate women much more than he does men...which is not so surprising, as that's kind of what people do in our culture.

PH often compares femme bio-women with MTF trannies, to insinuate that the bio-women are not femme enough, and therefore ugly. Nice. Sometimes, these bio-women are "villains," like Paul McCartney's now-ex, Heather Mills.

Today, he compared Ms. Mills to "Jeremy the out of control trannie," a homeless transwoman who recently crashed her car into a lingerie store who'd denied her application for a job. To get to those facts, I had to click through to the page where that expanded version (the post that lives on the main page is two pics with a teaser) lives, which is also the comment page. I tried not to read them, because Hilton's readers generally seem to be a shallow, xenophobic bunch, and they say some pretty offensive shit. Of course, today was no different, although there are a few people who chimed in to chide PH for his transphobic bullshit. He'd added his own commentary to the newspaper article he'd lifted, saying how no homeless person he knows has a car. I bet he knows a ton of homeless people. What a fucking idiot.

And that did it. Enough is enough. I'm through with you, Perez. I'll find some other mindless entertainment to rest my brain on when I need a break from being a productive person in the world. In fact, you can go fuck yourself Perez Hilton, and continue to be a hater and exploit the insecurities and prejudices of your (generally speaking--not us!) immature readers. It's not your fatness or your gayness that makes you ugly--it's the shit that comes out of your mouth.

Me-yow

For the first time in many, many years, this Mouthy Femme (would it be strange for me to start referring to myself in the 3rd person as "the MF?") has joined a club. In fact, I don't know that I've ever been in a club. I "started" a few clubs throughout my awkward years with groups of friends, but we just hung out in their basements or wherever and I don't ever remember them going as far as a second meeting. I might have been in the ski club for awhile in high school, but I only went to one meeting ever, and on one ski trip.

So this is kind of big news.

Perhaps even more strange, the club puts on shows and most of the members perform in them. In spite of having performed in some plays as a child, and mostly enjoyed it very much, I don't really identify as an "artist," let alone an "actor."

But the members of the club are adorable, and the shows are awesome (ok I've only seen one, but it was awesome) and I've never had much of a queer community (the queer community being pretty small, and being "queer" being so different than being "gay" and as a queer femme, often not being read as queer--or not queer enough, especially having partnered w/men in the past) and they didn't care that I don't identify as a "lesbian" or an "actor." They just let me show up to their meeting, and now I'm a Kitty.

I'm not going to be performing anytime soon, but I will be appearing in costume at the next show. I'll leave you to wonder.

I'm not sure that I'll ever get on stage, but it's not outside the realm of possibilities. I'm definitely looking forward to hanging out with the ladies (and the trannies and even the straight boys w/queer aesthetics--the Kitties are not Michigan), and am grateful to the two who recruited me for being so sweet about it.

If you'd told me a year ago that I'd be in a lesbian performance troupe, I woulda said you were crazy. But then, until I met Mr. Man, the thought never ever crossed my mind that I would ever wind up in Baltimore. But here I am. And even though I miss New York and I miss Oly and I miss Montana, the Charm seems to be offering up some pretty interesting doors for both him and me, and maybe because it's kinda small, or maybe because the last few places I've lived have been so competitive, but it seems like everything we want to do is not just possible, but easy. Maybe I'm just finally realizing that they're easy. (Though in this case, I think I'm only now remembering that want to be social and maybe to act--I think I forgot I liked it after I realized I was never going to be a movie star.)

This kind of weird, unexpected twist in life gives me a funny kind of light feeling in my chest, almost giddy and like I'm in the right place, doing the right thing, following some invisible thread that leads me to the quirky joys and amazing people in my life.

Yay.

Come to think of it, thank fucking goodness my life doesn't look like I imagined back when I was hanging out with those girls in the basement--I'd be married w/children, possibly Mormon, and an ER doctor (or a movie star). My real life has been waaay more amusing than anything I ever would've thought.

You're it

I was tagged yesterday by the fabulous and uber-gay Rouge to take part in a chain letter-style thingy where bloggers post random quotes from whatever book they pick up. Looking back, that sentence doesn't really seem to make sense, so here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 (or more) pages.
2. Open the book to page 123 and find the 5th sentence.
3. Post the next 3 sentences.

Ok. So I grabbed Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, that famous old bummer of a book about the Chicago meatpacking industry, a book I've been meaning to read for years, and finally picked up at Red Emma's (which is a pretty good cure for Bluestockings withdrawals) a few weeks ago. Turning to pg 123...

So it was finally decided that two more of the children would have to leave school. Next to Stanislovas, who was now fifteen, there was a girl, little Kotrina, who was two years younger, and then two boys, Vilimas, who was eleven, and Nikalojus, who was ten. Both of these last were bright boys, and there was no reason why their family should starve when tens of thousands of children no older were earning their own livings.

I'm kind of a picky bitch when it comes to writing, and new to the personal bloggy thing, so I don't have any blogs to tag. (sniff) But Rouge says it's not really that kind of thing--I'm not going to you know, have bad luck for the next 5 years or whatever. So I'll leave you with those 3 depressing quotes and let this little strand die out and head out to Liberty Taxes to (you guessed it) get my taxes done. Ugh. Hopefully, the adorable (we think) tranny who's been out there dressed as Uncle Sam will be hanging out waving to cars today.

*In an (I think) interesting side note, perhaps you noticed that both Baltimore and Manhattan's radical bookstores have colors in the names of them. I find this particularly interesting, because I happen to have a little color/name theme in my life--I did my undergrad at the Evergreen State College, worked at Yellowstone for several years, lived in Red Lodge, Montana for one year and while there, worked at the Blue Ribbon Bar. In more random colortalk, Rouge has a thing called color synesthesia. In her mind, letters and numbers each have their own color. I wish I could read her blog in color.

Flushing away but still more shit

As of Monday, a full 5 days after we alerted our douchebag landlord to our toilet woes (and a full 48 hrs longer than he had, legally, to fix it) we were back in business, bathroom-wise. But the shitstorm that has plagued us since we moved here has yet to abate--that douchebag (perhaps I should just start referring to him as the DBLL) got so stressed and pissed about all the money he's spent over the last few months fixing up his house that he's passing that stress on to us, in the form of trying to evict our roommate, Miss D.

We told him she'd moved in and he was fine with it, but after they happened upon each other for the first time in the alleyway (right after she got fired from her shitty job) he decided to use the fact that we hadn't submitted that information in writing to fuck with us. In fact, he pretty much threatened to kick us all out. Yay for crazy DBLLs!

We're giving it a few days to blow over, and then we're going to send him a diplomatic email and make our case for Miss D staying. Of course, the larger issue is whether we should stay--who knows when that crazy fuck is going to hassle us again?

In other poopy news, Belle (aka Devil Dog) had an upset stomach yesterday and took a huge runny dump on the stairs, which I wouldn't mention except that after I'd walked her down those stairs (thinking "what is that smell?") with her, somehow managing neither to see or step in it, even though it was huge and right in the middle of the step. It wasn't until Miss D joined us downstairs and mentioned it that I realized how lucky I'd somehow been.

(what kind of pollyanna am I, reporting how happy I am not to have stepped in dog shit, even though I did have to scrub it out of the carpet? Silver lining, folks)

Anyhoo, in more pleasant-smelling news, I'm writing this post from Little Morocco, the hooka bar/restaurant down the street from our (current) domain. Mr. Man and I noticed they had falafel a few weeks ago, which was very exciting for us, since most of the restaurants in our hood are pizza joints. He came first, alone, for takeout, but both of us enjoyed the same first experience here--the super friendly, proud owner gave us a tour to the upstairs, which has kind of an Eastern, rumpus-room flavor--it's all satin-y and pillow-y and hooka-y. Right now, I'm up here alone, digesting what was a delicious falafel, enjoying the faint aroma of flavored tobacco, taking advantage of the free WiFi and as usual, pretending to be working. In the back of my mind, I'm having fantasies about harem girls and boys. Ahhh. Unfortunately, the connection's a little slow. Can't have everything.

By the way, I'm sure my gorgeous and clever readers noticed the new widget I've placed (all by myself, y'all) at the bottom of my sidebar. I've just started reading Hightower's new book and I'm so excited, because as a radical queer femme, I've often fought with myself internally over my love for old cowboys, so many of whom are red-necky and sexist and homophobic. Jim Hightower, though, has that cowboy sensibility but takes a much more informed political stance--but he's still got that cute old cowboy vibe, you know? Anyhoo, I thought it'd be fun to watch the time run out on that dumbfuck president of ours together. Enjoy!

"That's not good."

Pardon my undying (even in the face of incredible un-funnyness) love for the pun. Mr. Man and I had an insanely shitty day today. Literally.

It started first thing this morning with the toilet backing up on Mr. Man. Yuck!

Then, I took the dog out to poop and there was a hole in the bag and I didn't see it before I stuck my thumb in dog doo. Dammit!

Then, I got to hang out and watch our douche bag of a landlord plunge the toilet. He was all dressed up (in black slacks, a black mock turtleneck and dark green sports coat) and he didn't even take his jacket off to plunge so that made it kind of funny but it doesn't make up for the fact that he's a douche and anyway, it didn't work.

I should mention that the kitchen sink is draining slow and the pipe outside, that all of our wastewater clearly flows out (it's directly below and outside of the bathroom) was leaking, and Mr. Man had called our douchebag landlord and told him about it, and he didn't believe him (and blew me off when I brought it up, plunger in hand, today).

Anyway, he called a plumber and took off, and when the guy (who was a cute kid, actually, and btw Mr. Man, I forgot to tell you that he loved Bitsy) finally showed up, he looked around and when I told him about the pipe outside, he of course wanted to check it out, so after showing him our poop-filled toilet, I led him through our embarrassingly messy boudoir, and sent him out the window and down the fire escape, which is the only route to the backyard (yay row houses!)

I sat in the windowsill and smoked a cigarette and watched him. He started knocking off some of the insulation that is wrapped around the bottom 6 ft or so of the ancient pipe, and when he did, almost immediately, the pipe sprung leaks that shot straight out from it, and the poor guy had to run for fucking cover.

"That's not good."

"No shit." (again, I apologize)

So, tomorow'll be another shitty morning with the landlord and because he thought the kid's estimate was too high (easy to think when you're not the one having to get creative about finding places to poo) another plumber. We're thinking that now that we got ourselves a Hummer, we oughta just spring for one of those fancy condos (wink).

Know what else is shitty? Madonna's new video. I haven't listened to or followed Madonna in a long time, but I was excited about this video because she was supposedly going to "save the world in 4 minutes." Save the world my ass--what is that shit.

omg I almost forgot to mention the last poop story of the day--what a crazy shitty day--you kind of have to laugh and wonder what the fuck the universe is trying to tell you. I met Mr. Man this evening at the opening night of the Transmodern Festival, and in the middle of some experimental theatre that frankly went on a little way too long, one of the characters was a turd. Seriously. WTF?

On the road again...

So, if you've asked me or Mr. Man since we've moved how we're liking the Charm, we've undoubtedly answered "we really need a car" (although surprisingly, I haven't whined about it at all here). Public transport in Baltimore not being what it is in New York, and living across town from our few friends, is tough! Even tougher, poor Mr. Man's 15 or 20 mile commute to school has, on occasion, taken him as long as 2 hrs--one way.

So I'm sure you'll all be glad to hear that we finally got a car.

Isn't it awesome looking? I know what you're thinking: "no way they got a Hummer." But some poor sucker got it repossessed, so we got a really sweet deal on it! Plus, I combined the loan with my existing student debt, so I now owe Sallie Mae close to a million dollars, but I should be able to get everything paid off by the time I retire. Anyway, it's worth it. Even if gas is already up past $3/gallon.

I just feel so...safe when I'm driving around in that sucker. And HOT! Everyone knows that high femmes are even more sexy and femme (but also a little tough, which multiplies the sexy factor exponentially) when they're behind the wheel of a big rig. And nobody will ever doubt the hardcore masculinity of my Mr. Man when he's cruising around in it, either. It's testosterone on wheels, even if it is a fugly shade of yellow!

Besides, they're not all bad...now we can join with other socially-responsible Hummer drivers and save lives and stuff.

I know--SUVs are really bad. But get this: we're going to convert it to biodiesel. Everybody knows we're in the midst of an energy crisis--but that's why we're in Iraq, right? (How our oil got under their soil is the big question, but that's a whole nother blog post) Besides, we figured that if global warming really gets going the way they say it's going to, we don't have that much time left to live it up. The way I see it, it's every mouthy femme and trans man for themselves, so what the heck, you know?