Welcome to my world of pain. In it, we say “ow”. “Ow, that fucking hurts”, and “Ow, when will this stop?”

Things like that. Meet the right side of my neck. Its postal code is 0w0w0w.

I don’t know. It’s all the exercise I’ve been getting, I guess, and my neck’s all fucked up for the fourth day in a row. Since I don’t have good enough medical to go to town on the massage, I should put out a personal ad, like, “Will trade my cooking and hot sex for your cleaning and massage skills. And your similarly hot sex.”

Boo, hiss. Muscle spasms are evil. Sigh.

(Despite that, I shall climb the highrise stairs in the morning. I shall not be circumvented by a mere spasm!)

A Canadian medical study has “…found that the (Botox) toxin passed easily from the targeted muscle into surrounding ones, weakening all the muscles in the area. ” Hence the whole new era of the non-smiling smile, brought to you by the makers of Botox, in which the smilers can’t smile because all their muscles are weakened. Instead, they have that weird spawned-by-the-Joker deformed smirk that just makes you leery of them and distrustful of their sincerity.

Then there’s the warning issued earlier this month about how, gasp, Botox has been found to result in some cases to cause strong side effects, sometimes even death.

Hmm. See, I never fuckin’ thought it made any sense to use a toxin that can cause death as a means of making myself pretty, even if a regulatory body and highly profitable industry managed to magically extract the killer deadly stuff from within.

…Which, surprise, surprise, reports now state they didn’t do so well after all. My question is, how many hundreds of millions of dollars were made in between the “Duh, looks okay to me” stamp and the inevitable realization of the obvious: Playing with toxins appears, at first glance, to be a real fuckin’ moronic thing to do.

Sorry, not shocked here. Ooh, scandal of scandals… botullism toxin, even when namby-pambied by a board of experts, can still fuck you up.

I pointed the story out to my boss and she goes, “It’s called BoTOX! Suddenly it lives up to its name and people are surprised?”

Unfuckin’ real what we do to ourselves, all in the name of beauty.

The silly people with their Botox, me with my stairs of evil. But only one of those two things will extend a life expectancy.

(It’ll be spent in agony, but it’ll last longer. Now… how is this a good thing? Okay, let’s not think about the pain/longtime deal and just pretend it’s an adjustment period… which it is, right?)

People probably think I’m anti-religion. I’m not. I don’t think it’s right for me. I have faith, I have beliefs, and I have a very strong moral code. They’re not exclusive to religious types. Problem with religion is, it’s run by men, and I usually take issue with the stupid rules of man intervening where mortals shouldn’t tread.

My problem is when we go mixing politics with religion. Like the sticker on my scooter says, “The last time we mixed politics and religion, people were burned at the stake.”

Religion can, and has, accomplish both wonderful and horrible things. It’s like Uncle Pete says in Spider-Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

One church in Florida, “Relevant Church”, which dubs itself a casual and contemporary Christian church, has put out a 30-day sex challenge to its parishioners. In an attempt to stop the always-rising tide of divorce, the reverend is asking his married parishioners to have sex every day for a month.

They’ve even created a guide with an “exercise” each day. I haven’t examined it too much, but I suspect people will need other sources for how to go beyond just committing to having sex each day to instead having great, mindblowing sex and stoking the romance, but, hey… sex every day is something I think is awesome.

You can check out the church’s website here, but beware of its bandwidth doing the herky-jerky with so many surfers coming from all the different media covering this “revolutionary” story. If it’s giving you a message about server problems, just try again.

Personally, speaking as one of the undersexed, I think it’s a crime that anyone who has the option of frequent sex is not capitalizing on it. Sex, it’s better than valium, it’s free, and it’s heart-healthy. Frequent sex inspires conversations and does wonders for both people’s self-esteem, and poor self-esteem and lack of trust are two of the biggest catalysts for relationships failing, aside from no one getting laid.

Sex every day makes sense. Nice to see some churches getting in on the action.

Ah, the moon.

Some would say the moon is what keeps lovers together, two can look upon it miles and miles apart, and yet it’s the same for both.

Peoples of all kinds have used the moon to mark the passage of time throughout the world, just look at the Chinese lunar calendar, or any of the many others.

But, for some of us, who go by the name of “women”, the moon often marks other things. Native American women would call their periods their “moon time”.

In fact, most women even today, will receive their periods on or around either the monthly full or new moon. Me, I’m a full moon gal. With the waxing of the moon comes PMS and all the other fun things wimminfolk get to enjoy with this monthly “gift”.

I think it’s cruelly ironic my period comes with the full moon. Like I’m not feeling nuts enough already with the red tide, but Mother Nature wants to hurl the weirdness of the full moon at me as well? Yeah, thanks for that.

With PMS usually comes moodiness, and sometimes it catches me off-guard. Sometimes I completely forget I’m on the verge of the red tide and don’t understand why my emotions are so awry.

This weekend sort of got away from me, emotionally. Saturday was a big day, the day I’ve sort of been putting off for nine years. The day I went out to collect an 1880s oak hall stand of my mother’s from a casual friend of hers I’d never met, who’d been hanging on to the piece for the last 13 years.

The whole day was about nine hours of frustrating work for myself and beloved GayBoy, who came along to help, and I thought I was really too tired to feel a thing Saturday night… I kind of was trying to ignore the fact that I’d finally picked this thing up the weekend smack-dab between the anniversary of mom’s cancer find and her birthday, but maybe my timing could’ve been better.

After all, I guess I underestimated the power of the past and the pull of unresolved emotions.

The plan was, I’d pick up this piece and then I’d sell it to make serious cash for doing a few things I want/need, like pimping up my computer and my place, which is a small apartment and really doesn’t have the room for all these awesome antiques I have, let alone another one… and a thousand or two goes a long way for a lowly writer chick in North America’s second most expensive city. Mm, money.

…So I was stunned when emotion washed over me like I couldn’t have imagined. The piece was sitting there, literally in the centre of my living/dining area, and I couldn’t avoid staring at it as I recuped energy on the sofa. I got up, wandered over to it, wrapped my hands around the scarves bar on it while I closed my eyes. Suddenly, this electric wave felt like it pulsed through me and I had this whirlwind of recollections swirling around me, all centring around me as a young Steff of 10-12 years old.

Back then, I had a pretty ambitious hat collection for a kid. We had this awesome sunroom, probably 20×20′, and the centrepiece was this hallstand. Two walls and the hallstand were inundated by MY hats. Everything from sombreros and military hats to feathered showgirl hats from the 1920-40s.

And it just never meant anything to me then. Of course my mom indulged my hat collection. That’s what moms did, right?

But now… now I’m 34 and I realize how much I took for granted, and how special I felt knowing my most important hats belonged on this fantastic piece of furniture, and that Mom took the time to even dust them sometimes.

I felt valued then, but something about that just came rushing at me 200 miles an hour Saturday night and I felt truly, truly loved by my mother, even though she’s been gone nearly nine years now.

And I cannot tell you what changed in me Saturday night and I suspect that, like all great epiphanies, it’ll muddy up and slip away from me with each passing day, but for a brief time, a couple short hours, I felt like my mother never left at all… and even though the fact that I had the biggest, deepest cry I’ve had in recent years would seem to suggest it was a bad and morose evening, it was anything but.

I slept the sleep of someone who truly has peace, a sleep I’ve seldom ever had, and woke up way too early for a Sunday, but more refreshed than I’ve felt in months, maybe years.

Something weird happened to me Saturday night, something I can’t explain, something that makes me still believe in some kind of life after death and the continued presence of those who are supposed to be long gone. Something I can’t do justice to now, probably never will.

And I don’t understand why, now that I’ve just gotten my period, now that I see the full moon waning, it somehow lessens what I experienced Saturday night, but… somehow it seems to do just that. So I’m fighting that and sharing my strange, poorly conveyed experience in an attempt to further memorialize it, even though I blogged about it on The Ditch on the weekend.

I feel like something ended for me Saturday, something inexplicable I’ve been wanting to have end for a long time. I don’t know what I lost or what I resolved, maybe I’ll never really know. All I do know is I’m grateful I feel this, whatever “this” is.

Man. Life’s weird sometimes. Fitting, what with full moons and all. And, sometimes, some of these inexplicable things maybe shouldn’t be analyzed, but instead should be appreciated for the simple fact that it’s occurred… kind of like loving the moon for no reason other than, well, it’s the moon.

Enjoy your full moons, minions.

Like any blogging keener, I was thrilled when I had the chance to be interviewed for a shitty little online thingie, whoring my blogsa couple years back, maybe even three. Somehow, like the ignorant little blogger I was, I blurted my full name out, and the fucking twit who interviewed me somehow failed to grasp my meaning when I said “Don’t use my name” and I was outted as the authoress of a blog that had sexual content with my full name attached, yielding some 20,000 hits or something dumb-ass like that.
The last couple years have been fraught with unemployment (mostly my own fault, I realize now, in retrospect) and I have spent much time on the job-hunting prowl.
I know for a fact that my outting with this blog has affected me professionally. I have lost one job for this blog, failed to get a few I should have been a lock for (inexplicably, too), and was threatened with the loss of another. My last employer found out about my blog four months into my working there, and instructed me that I could never, ever write about my job. I was asked to delete postings, and kept under an uncertain job-security shadow for the last two months before I forfeited my position.
The internet can, and will, affect your life if you cross the perceived bounds of what is “normalized” behaviour.
I am fortunate I am in good with this great family I work for now. They know of my writing in all its forms, encourage me to continue it, accommodate my life in every way, but come with the small drawback that I could be laid off for up to 6 weeks a year… or not at all. But the rest of the time, I work when I want, for anything between 35-45 hours a week, on my whim, or as workload may dictate (to which I’m always allowed to say no). But… what great people.
And I know firsthand that they are very much the exception to the average employment rule. The people I’ve worked for in the last three years really don’t hold a fucking candle.
The internet is not your friend, so don’t kid yourself. There are daunting tales emerging about people who are having disastrous effect from their inability to censor more reckless thoughts on the web. You may think your innocuous little Facebook status alerts are cutesy and amusing, but they’re snapshots that make up a very, very complete picture for potential employers… and even potential dates.
Your internet behaviour, including that on internet dating sites, can, and will, affect you both professionally and personally. Vigilance is warranted, even demanded.
I have known for a very, very long time that I have been outted in the blogosphere. I decided a long time ago that any one of a number of postings had pretty much shattered any conservative credibility I had, so I figured why start censoring myself now?
But you probably haven’t paid such a price now, and if there’s any way to limit the permeability of your Facebook, MySpace, or any other social networking page, then you’d better ensure you start conforming a bit.
Me, I think we’re at a premie stage of all this. I think a few years are going to pass and all of a sudden a huge awakening will dawn upon us all and a realization will collectively form that: Everyone has skeletons in their closets.
The thing about microscopes is, they’re built to find imperfections. The internet, it’s the biggest microscope of them all.
Two, three, five years ago, or even 13 years ago, who knew the permanence of these five-second comments we’d leave on the web? Now, anything from ’96 or so on is found in the cache of that uber-engine, Google.
I left my last job because they found out about my blog and “didn’t know” what to make of it. I could smell my blood on a spit and knew my days were numbered, so when I found out my old employers wished I would return, I leapt at the chance. I was tired of feeling I had to censure my postings so that I wouldn’t offend my mealticket.
But fuck that now.
And fuck censoring it for anyone. Who’s kidding who? Blew that years ago. Now it’s all about finding employers and people who fit my definition of “right” and it’s a price I’ll continue to pay, all because some fuckwit published my name when I’d done everything in my power not to have my name known, and because I refuse to try and pretend I’m something I’m not, but most of all because I refuse to apologize when I know I’ve done nothing wrong. After all, I’ve been told this is a free country and we had freedom of practice, so I thought I’d be crazy and take ’em all on their word. Free. That’s us, right? Free to say what we think, whenever we wish to speak it?
Or, maybe not so much. Wouldn’t that suck, though?
Que sera sera, man. Read this International Herald Tribune article and it’ll smack some reality check into ya. Whew. Heady times, baby. Give it five years. Things’ll start being digested with a grain of salt. Until then, though, and maybe a little after too, watch yer ass, minions. Watch yer ass.

With Valentine’s Day being here, and knowing most guys wanna be a rockstar for their femmes of choice, I’m hoping to put a couple nuggets out there for them to digest. See below.
I wanted to write something along the lines of my “vixen” series for guys trying to be better lovers, but I just didn’t get that happening in time, and instead you get this — more of a collection of things to keep in mind for being a better lover.
And in the next couple months I’ll deliver more on how to get your head better in the durty s-e-x game, and how to produce results from it. Y’all deserve it.
Like Tom Waits sings, you gotta pin your ear to the wisdom post. When you’re doing your damnedest to rile your woman up something awful, you need to listen to every little thing she says or just plain emits. Her moans and groans and pleas and cries are your guide to where your attentions are best spent.

Once upon a world, my wimminfolk readers, I once was a quiet lover during sex. Involved as hell, oh yeah, but very hush-hush about my reactions. Then I noticed that when I started expressing what I felt through groans and gasps and moans — even when I was masturbating with no company around — I had a better, deeper orgasm. It seemed to me that some kind of psychic lock opened and I was able to get more into the moment.
Stop worrying about sounding silly, and start being more free with yourself. Your orgasms will be a thank-you card you’ll love, love, love. You don’t have to be “let’s tell the neighbours!” loud, but you need to be audible. Give your man some of your “aural pleasure”, and it’s likely his performance will improve, too, because he’ll be more confident about what’s working and what’s not. Personally, I keep the volume low since I’m an apartment dweller, but I’m effective, very. You should be too. You can thank me later.

All right, guys. You want me to make this easy for ya, don’t you, and tell ya a secret magic button to push to get your woman past Go every time? Good luck with that.
Women aren’t one-size-fits-all like a t-shirt, so there’s no sure-fire list of things to listen to. You need to use your judgment. You need to discern between the good variations on reactions as well as the bad ones. Take your standard-issue sharp-intake gasp: This can be both good and bad, bad, bad. When the sharp-intake gasp happens, does the body tense, becoming stiff, even rigid? Does she (or he) pull away? Then it’s probably a bad thing and you should throw things in reverse mighty quick. Or do they start to quiver a bit, shuddering? Does she (or he) reach out to touch you? Do their legs fall open a little more or start to brush against you or their back arch? You’re probably heading in a pretty sweet direction, so don’t stop now.
Back in the early ’90s, I taught a few friends how to drive on my rustbucket standard, and to start the lessons off, I’d say: “Driving stick is like having sex. Every little thing you do, your car’s gonna react to. You should be able to shift gears just by knowing the engine’s ready to shift, not because you’re reading some tachometer that tells you so… listen to it, feel it, and go with your instinct.” Not having a tachometer for my car was probably the best thing to ever happen to me. I rocked the stick because I learned to feel the car and know what it needed. That’s all it takes.
Sex involves a hell of a lot of trust, and not just between you and your partner. You have to trust that you’re reading her signals right. If you’re wrong, then get it right next time. But if you don’t trust yourself, you won’t be confident enough to be a lover worth lovin’.
Probably the worst thing you can do as a lover is to ignore the physical and aural clues being given off by your partner. There’s a difference between changing up approaches — ie: nibbling on the clitoris and then sucking and nibbling your way over to her thigh — for heightened arousal and teasing, say, and the really awkward sudden switch between, oh, fingering her then proceeding with oral without having any tease and play between the stages. Never, ever just jump back and forth between approaches without using that vast landscape of skin and all your body parts to help keep the arousal constant. Women need gradual, constant stimulation to get to orgasm, so don’t fuck it up by playing like Chunky Loverman who doesn’t get the notion of flow.
You need to be fluid. Channel your inner Zen master and be confident and have flow. Every movement has a purpose: To leave your lover utterly satiated.
Always use a hand to caress and fondle her (listen up girls, ditto for you). Your hands should never go unused when you’re trying to satisfy your lover. But when she’s getting into what you’re doing, don’t just suddenly change to something else. Women can be difficult to get onto the orgasm path, so don’t go pushing her off of it with a lack of finesse. If she’s groaning and really hot, then you want to change between things that are equally arousing. You could be nibbling her clit while kneading and caressing her inner thighs, and then change positions, using your fingers on her clit as you nibble back and forth on her thigh and mons, paying attention to creased areas since they’re often more sensitive.
Same thing with, say, changing sex positions. Flipping her over and thrusting back in works, sure, but it’s not as effective as taking a moment to rub her vagina a bit and stimulate all the good parts, use one hand to keep yourself hard while you’re getting her primed again. When she starts to get into your rubbing, then you enter. Flow, remember? Transition between every movement, or every change. Try to end the sudden switch-ups.
Now, guys, this should go without saying, but if you are fortunate enough to have a woman who has the guts to talk about what she wants out of sex, then be man enough to listen without getting your feelings hurt. This isn’t about you, right? You want HER to orgasm, then let her teach you how her body works, if she knows, because you will not always be so lucky. There are a lot of ignorant women out there who don’t know what their body likes. It’s NOT ABOUT YOU, and you need to get that out of your head. This about her body, how she reacts, and I really don’t give a fuck if you think it’s your moneyshot that works with “all” women — because there is no moneyshot. You need to figure your woman out and you need to know she’s not just a cookie cut-out of every woman you’ve ever been with.
Every woman is different. This is why you love them, but you need to get it through your head that each woman being different is a GOOD thing. Variety’s the spice of life, yeah? You need to understand that women’s organs are much more complicated than the trusty penis, and, as a result, men need to use the opportunity to learn all they can about each woman they’re with. If she’s not being vocal and you’re getting no aural clues, then you need to casually try to find out more by asking what she’s liking and not. Never, ever be shocked or react to what her desires are, or you might shame her into believing she can’t trust you with that information, and that could be deadly to your sex life.
Since it’s Valentine’s day and all, let’s just mention a couple things men need to remember more often:

• Hard sex with pounding-thrusting can be great now and then, but if you think every woman loves it, or even that most women get a lot out of it, you’re kidding yourselves. The end of the vaginal canal, for most women, has little feeling. It doesn’t push any of our buttons, most of the time. Deep thrusting does more for you men than it does for most women. Why? Because while you have nerve endings at the tip AND base of your penis, most of our nerve endings are towards the surface of our vagina and within the first couple inches of the canal, and continual just deep thrusting results in pretty routine thumping of all our most sensitive parts. Usually most chicks will like hard thrusting for one very good reason: the rhythmic slapping effect on the clitoris. Any attention the clit gets is a fun time, most times. An instant way to give her greater pleasure is to start using more shallow and to be sure you’re using fingers on the clitoris at the same time. (Please, don’t misunderstand this to think no female likes deep thrusting — I mean nothing of the kind. I just mean it’s not what you think it is, and needs to be something you do occasionally, not constantly.)
• The missionary position gets pretty boring pretty fast for some of us. Change positions! Trying other positions means the penis enters at different angles, allowing different areas of the vagina to receive sensation, and can mean for a really wild variation in feeling. When it comes to positions, there is no greater online resource than EVERYTHING SEX, where you’ll find photographic examples of positions of all kinds, with short writeups explaining the move. These pages are VERY graphic and are WAY not safe for work. Here is their page of “erotic positions“, and these are your more standard positions you won’t need to be a yoga master to handle, and the “standard” positions are broken into handy categories like “man on top”, “woman on top”, “rear-entry”, “kneeling” and more.
• When it comes to positioning, something you might’ve loved with another partner won’t necessarily be anything great with a new partner. Why? Every body’s different, and you need to try position after position to see what’s going to work the best for you. Don’t be scared to try new positions. It might just blow your mind.
• Remember: About a half of all women have trouble orgasming, if they can orgasm at all. Some 40% of women don’t masturbate (dumb!) and that’s probably huge in why they can’t orgasm. You pressuring her to orgasm? Not going to help. Again: her inability to orgasm is NOT ABOUT YOU. It’s about her, her body, her mental issues, her comfort factor, her trust in you. If she can’t orgasm and you make it about you, she’s going to feel like shit, and, guess what? She still won’t be able to orgasm. Instead, tell her you’d rather just bring her pleasure until she can’t handle it any more, and when she wants you to stop, you will, and you’ll be all right with that. Then, you be Energizer Bunny man, and you keep going and going and going when she’s enjoying it, but if it means you finally need to blow your load, then do that, but continue by giving her oral very, very soon. Until she wants you to stop, then stop. Really, stop. (And if she wants you to stop way sooner than you want to? Tough. It’s called “consent” for a reason.)

So, if you’re having a special night this week to commemorate Valentine’s, then I hope it’s a wonderful one. Remember to get prepared in advance if “special” is what you want. Be organized — have your oils, rubs, props, lube, condoms, a wiping cloth*, bottled water, and more at your ready — in advance so that when the sex does happen, it’s a world you can stay in for a very, very long time. This goes double for the women out there. When a guy sees that you’re consciously PLANNING to have great sex with him, they’ll usually be very, very happy to see you deviously scheming a night with them and it ups the excitement ante.
Guys, however, might not want to be so obvious about their planning. Women will appreciate the planning during and after the act, but before the act will likely offend a lot of women. Which is stupid, but it is what it is. It implies something, the planning. Some women will think it means you see them as easy, I guess. Shrug. But plan and organize anyhow. Most women will be thrilled to be wiped clean, dried off, and given a bottle of water. Contradicting? Of course. But that’s the fabulous female mind for you. We’re complicated.
(Actually, some very good, longstanding societal norms have caused these “mysterious” reactions from us… undoing all that will take a generation or two. But that’s another posting for another time.)
Happy Valentine’s Day, folks. And, if you’re single, rent your favourite erotic flick, make a nice meal, and don’t forget to masturbate. Or go to the gym and watch other obviously single folks get hot and sweaty with ya, and make sure you look good. Who knows, you could get lucky. Eye contact, it’s free! 🙂
The pic is from sexyfx.com, aka Everything Sex.
********
*Wiping cloth: I thought of this a while back and still think it’s a great idea: Put two or three (or more!) damp washcloths in a rice cooker with just a little water, and keep it on the “keep warm” setting, so you can clean each other up a little when messy syrups or other fluids make things a little too “durty” for your tastes. Put an extra bowl by the cooker so you can put the used cloths in it rather than back in the cooker. Make sure you have a couple dry cloths, too, so no one needs be moist and chilled.

Valentine’s Day. A cruel joke, it would seem.

A day for lovers set smack-dab in the middle of February… the month where everyone’s just hangin’ on by a thread, awaiting the reprieve to come with spring. The month where most of us are slightly looser cannons than we’d normally be. A month filled with terse exchanges, groaning, television reruns, bills (and usually 3 less days to earn your money for some of us), and shitty weather. The month you’re probably the most likely to catch a flu or cold, other than November.

Yeah, gets me romantic every time. Pfft. Boo, hiss.

Hell, everyone’s still out of shape and low-energy after all the mad bingeing at Christmas and the doldrums of winter.

And what about the single people, eh? They’re in the same shitty February mode and they’re getting blitzed with all this pro-mating / relationship advertising and programming. It gets a bit much, you know. At my local coffee shop (a coffee shop!) they’re selling candy hearts and heart-shaped saucer and mug sets. It’s everywhere.

Back to Valentine’s, though. If you’re going to have a stupid-ass “lover’s” day, which I clearly have issues with anyhow, then do so, say, at the end of May, when everyone’s had a little sun and they’re feeling fitter and sexier, the days are longer, there’s a statutory holiday, and money’s good before the crazy party-spending of summer. Now that’s a good time to implement a mandatory-shag-and-dinner weekend. Not fuckin’ February!

Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick. Everybody knows I’m right. I don’t care if it’s actually in honour of St. Valentine, whose significance escapes me right now, yada, yada. It’s lousy friggin’ timing. And, besides that, it’s flat-out bullshit.

If you need a DAY to prompt you to demonstrate romance with your lover, then you don’t deserve a lover. If you need a DAY to remind you to be generous, you need to work on the fine art of giving.

You should be romantic and caring and expressive all the time. It makes for a wonderful relationship. It’s why we love the beginnings of relationships — we’re more present, more expressive. Why not make that last? You feel great when you’re having those blissed-out intimate experiences, so why not strive to make them happen more regularly? And giving, well, giving just all-out rocks. I love to give. I’ve never been really flush with cash, but I’m generous in my nature, and giving in my uniquely me way.* Whether it’s just making a small treat for someone, anyone, or something more grand, you shouldn’t need an occasion to compel you. Giving’s the new getting. Ain’t you heard?

I love cooking an all-out meal, blitzing the place with candles, throwing a blanket and pillows on the floor in an obvious sign of later intentions, and pretty much going to town with setting a good mood… any time of the year, and given the opportunity in a relationship, it happens often.

And I’m too pragmatic to be into going out for a fancy meal on the night you’re supposed to do it just so restaurants can gouge me senseless. It’s not fair, not right, and makes me think it’s better to have the dinner out a week or two before or after. And you should, too. You should stay in, do up a sensual feast, dine naked, and boycott the gouging bastards.

Nonetheless.

I’m gonna work on a special little Valentine-ish posting to give y’all a few ideas of your own, and I’ll have that up for you by the 13th.

As much as it galls me to commemorate the day. It’s time I deliver something tastier to my faithful minions, as patiently as you’ve put up with my shit and all.

So, I’ll tell you no details, but just let it be known I’ve gotten a lot of requests about it in the last couple years, and I’m finally delivering. Enjoy your wait. And you wanna read it before yer “big” night. I’ll try to get it posted a little earlier than Wednesday, so you can share with others in time for their “big” night, too.

*When it comes to giving of actual gifts, back when I had a car, I’d ride out to the valley and hit up the antique malls. On Christmas I gave a mint-condition set of tall Empire Strikes Back glasses (Hans, Leia, Luke, Vader, from Burger King, 1982) to one friend, cost me a paltry $25, and the expression on his face just made my week, man. Same Christmas, gave another friend a red 1952 rotary-dial telephone that he still uses. (I have one too, black, grandma’s. Visitors love the ring.) I gave others gifts that Christmas, but those are the only two I remember. Thing about retro and antique gifts is, people know you were thinking outside the box. Part of the whole point. Keep that in mind when you’re considering gifts. Do something different. Different makes money a little less relevant, ‘cos, hey, it’s different.

I get American politics, but I don’t get American politics. I mean, it just seems like it’s so much work to be democratic in the USA. (I mean small-D democratic, not big D.)

You people have to vote all the goddamned time. Tomorrow, here we go again, another big American vote. Jesus Christ. How about voting on election day and only election day? I’m a big fan.

I just wanted to say this to my American friends: Enjoy this while it lasts. This is about to be the most interesting presidential race in three, maybe four decades. Everyone around the world is watching you.

We’re inspired by the choice available to you. (Except the creationist, Huckabee. Not again.)

The thing we, the rest of the world, sort of think about America is that a) it wants to be the biggest country in the world, and be needed by everybody but b) hates it when we pick on ’em.

So, here’s the deal. Americans wanted to be the biggest, most important country in the world… well, now they are. So now when it appears the USA is coming apart at its seams –the Fed is slashin’ rates like it’s a Boxing Day sale, new jobless rate hikes last month are a “surprise” even to the fearmongering economists out there, and a war that just keeps droning on and on while more people die and more money’s spent…

…Now is when we, the rest of the world, want to remind Americans: You are the most important. The health of your country isn’t just relevant to you, it’s relevant to me, and possibly billions and billions of others. You are the most important country in the world. Your democracy is a precious asset that people around the world would weep to receive. Your economy profoundly affects much of the world. You cannot let Bush’s legacy be longstanding. His work, almost all of it, needs to be undone by people with bigger visions and greater accountability.

I’m not going to say who I want to win, because I like both Clinton and Obama, and, hell, liked Edwards too. I know this is just a primary, the whole Super Tuesday deal, but it’s the start of when Americans get to push their agendas and demand politicians discuss issues with the levity and insight required to run The Most Powerful Country on Earth.

I’m not saying Canada’s voting record is anything to be proud of, it’s not. It’s disgusting. But what’s more disgusting is the voting record for the country that stands as the poster child for freedom. What would happen if 90% of Americans showed up on voting day? What would happen if 90% of Americans were truly invested in changing, growing, and improving the country? Wow. That’d be an America I’d love to see.* I mean, nothing like having the affluent and white deciding all the issues for the country. How about all classes, all income brackets stand up and get votes counted in the Most Powerful Country on Earth? Let’s stop empowering the already powerful, and start spreading it around. All starts with a simple little vote.

*It’d be a Canada I’d love to see, too, if we all got a little more involved in issues that shape who we are.

I’m almost truly at a loss for words. I’m on the verge of great emotion, and I don’t really know what to make of it.

I’m also on the verge of a fresh new hell, a work week, so I don’t know if I’ll properly get to resolve these feelings any time soon.

But let’s at least set a scene for you. The scene is here, my apartment. My trusty digs, my long beloved pad. I love my apartment. Say whatever you want about the decor, it’s an original. I’ll share pictures this weekend when I’m all done, but trust me. Lots of bookshelves, antiques, cool knickknacks, great art.

And somehow I’ve let it all go over the last couple years. I stopped caring about my place and maintaining it became the unruliest of chores.

This past weekend, all three days of it, were spent in conquering the clutter and the excessive packrattish attributes, and rediscovering that long fabled quality of “order”.

And now my home looks better, more organized, less cluttered, and more ready to entertain than it has looked in years. In fact, it has never, ever been this organized, and I’m not even entirely done yet. I understand how to finish it now, and if what I see already is any indication, by the end of this week, I will have dramatically changed my life.

I had this thought right before this posting began that I want to explore more but now’s not the time. It occurred to me that I now have nothing left to hide behind. This place is straight up, simple, and open. Just like I’m trying to become again.

I’ve managed to purge about 15% of what I own over the weekend. A lot of shit. I’ve probably hiked up and down the four flights of stairs about 20 times this weekend, carrying as much as I could on every single load. I’ve taked at least five trips of scooter-laden stuff to donate. All of that 15%’s been recycled or donated, and I’ve only created one bag of trash. (An accomplishment in itself there.) But what I’ve been getting rid of, and there’s more ridding to do, isn’t really important. It was just stuff. (Still, I’m about 90% done in my apartment, and the stuff that’s left is easier to do.)

Now what I have is a home with space and openness. A place where I can finally find the peace I need.

And I cannot convey to you this incredibly mixed cloud of feeling and this emotional exhaustion I feel as I look around with pride and think “this is my home“.

I think this is what has been missing, what has prevented me from enjoying being single — whether single alone or single in the company of men.

After all, my home’s always been a great card to play in the friendship game, or even the dating game. Anyone walks in here, they instantly see there’s a lot going on behind me. Men absolutely love my apartment. I don’t know what specifically does it for them, but that’s the one thing I do know. They love my apartment and love to hang out here. And men or women, there’s nothing that amuses me more than watching people react to all the little things they find when they start looking my place over.

There’s nothing that makes one realize how little pride they’ve had until the pride returns en masse after its long absence. That’s just one of the curious new emotions I’m feeling this morning.

But most of all… it’s exhaustion. I could sleep all day. Instead, I’m off to work. And way to go, Giants. One hell of a last-minute play! Damn that was a great finish. Believe, man. Believe.

I don’t get into the whole cult of celebrity thing much because I think we give them a little too much attention. They’re doing a job. When the cameras shut off, leave ’em alone. Those are my thoughts.

But I’m gonna comment on two things.

One: Ohmigod, no, Heath Ledger went to a drug party? GASP. I think the more surprising news, given that he was a major celebrity, would have been he went to a party that didn’t have drugs. Come on! Rich, famous people do drugs. Not all of them, but if you’re at a party, there’s gonna be drugs, man.

Apparently he fesses up to smoking five dubes a day. Oh, wow, you evil pot smoker. Okay, smoking five joints a day, about the biggest crime against humanity you’re going to commit is forgetting to return disc four of The Wire to the DVD shop, man. Get serious. If that’s Ledger’s definition of “serious” drug use, I’d say the kid deserved a medal. Pfft.

And CNN’s marketing the shit out of it as “the mysterious death of Heath Ledger.” Uh-huh. For about, what, three or four more days, until the coroner weighs in. Christ. I’m still hoping for a heart defect that explains his persistent insomnia before his death.

Let’s wait and see, rather than speculating the shit out of it. And this is why my journalism degree is naught but a sheet of paper. I can’t stand the bullshit deemed “important” by big-biz media today.

***

Two: Britney Spears.

Okay, we’ve established that she’s lost her fucking nut. Know what? In my darkest hours, had cameras been everywhere, I’d have been a real fuckin’ case, too. Nothing like Spears, no doubt, but enough that I’d feel awkward if anyone saw the video.

I suspect the majority of us have moments when we’ve been fuckwits, and most of us lucked out and had our most shining moments before cell phones equipped with video cameras were a standard and YouTube became some new rite of passage.

Just give the woman some goddamned space and let her get her shit together. She was a Mouseketeer who killed the perfect relationship with Justin Timberlake, only to spiral down to the lowly KFed realm, then began to look bad against him as her career tanked post-Madonna kiss, and she lost her kids to the gold-digging, absolutely unemployed Federline.

Um, yeah, nuts isn’t a big surprise. Now let’s encourage the media to back the fuck off. I read the stories because I’m hoping for good news. I’m pulling for her.

Can’t stand her music and I’m not a fan, doubt I’ll ever be… but I’m pulling for her. No one deserves that 24/7-pulic-eye shit when they’re going through the darkest period of their lives. No one says “Hey, I wanna sing songs… and, sure, why don’t you record my every breath as my life comes apart at the seams and I lose everything I ever wanted, in, oh, nine years?”

Fuck, man. Anyone wonders why everyone likes the media, but no one ever trusts it? Go figger.