I won't be BMDTTT

Guess what BRDTTT stands for? You won't get it, so I'll tell you. Bring Your Dick to the Table. Apparently the artist  -- and I use that term loosely -- believes women can keep these expensive little pet cocks in their pockets to grab on to when they lose confidence in, for example, themselves in a business situation with men. A whole inch and a half of penile self-confidence right in the palm of our small, feminine hands.

The story is that she was engaged in a difficult business deal with men, grabbed her lip balm in her purse, and received an almighty epiphany about how holding a tiny penis in her hand would help her pick up her balls and behave like a man. Take hold of the masculine power she deserves by reminding herself to laugh at sexist behavior.

In her own words, she says, "There are negative voices in our society, our culture, maybe even your own family that can corrupt your inner monologue. If holding a small bronze dick and laughing at those voices, those fears helps you overcome them, then why not?

This is not a symbol; it is just a humorous talisman to remind us sexism is ridiculous."

Ugh. Seriously? What poppycock. Sexism is ridiculous? Has she fucking been paying attention? Sexism is responsible for the millions of hungry women and children who live below the poverty line; for women's wages, which still don't nearly equal men's for the same jobs -- if we can get the same jobs; for rape culture and all it entails, including rape; for slavery; for the bruises and black eyes we hide from our children; for Elliot Rodger's manifesto .....

For fuck's sake! Why would holding a tiny $150 dick in my secret hand make all of that funny to me? How would it give me courage? Would this tiny talisman really make me giggle instead of tensing up when I have to pass a man on a quiet street at night? Will it make me snicker because I'm in what's still considered a female profession, and even with a master's degree and years of experience I'm lucky to make minimum wage if I do my job well? Will it make me smile when I read about the women Elliot Rodger murdered because he was a virgin?

Several readers sent me links to this very expensive pocket rocket. I tried to find the humor in it. Really I did. See me trying? But I don't think sexism is absurd -- at least not in the ha! ha! sense. And I certainly don't think the answer is to hold a little dick in my hand to remind me to fucking laugh when I encounter it.

Right this minute, I'm like a lot of my friends: I'm pissed off that I'm still having the same conversation about sexism and rape culture and nice guy syndrome and how men hate women who won't fuck them when they demand to be fucked, and I'm still hearing the same response. I'm still hearing "most men aren't like that, so there's no problem here. Move on, ladies."

Guess what. Bullshit. Instead of carrying around a tiny penis to remind us to tee hee at the sexist behavior that permeates every facet of our lives, women want men to examine their own behavior to see if, in fact, they are part of the problem. We want men to stop telling us they know better than we do how other men treat us. We want men to call other men out when they treat women like objects. We want to tell our stories and be believed. And we want to own our own bodies once and for all ....

I do not need a penis in my pocket to be a complete human being. I need autonomy over my own body, my woman's body. I already have a lovely vagina and that should be enough to make me an equal adult member of the human race.

Obviously this is a gimmick to make money, and not something serious, but I'm feeling raw right now, along with many of my women friends. I do not find sexism a laughing matter. So keep your golden penis and give me my human rights.

Did you miss me?

I would apologize for not writing here for a while, but May was a rough month. You probably remember that May is National Masturbation Month, because I wrote about that last year. I just find it exhausting. Don't you? Cramps in my hands. Wrist strain. I'm glad it only comes once a year. (No pun intended.)

School is almost out, so I'll be writing here every day in June. On my honor, I will try .... 

I have a lot to say. I hope some of it will be amusing, even clever. Some of what I write this month might piss a few people off. I'm unpacking the need to please everybody, so I'm not going to worry about that. As Anne Lamott said, "You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better." Yes, indeedy. Preach it, Anne.

Life has been a little crazy this past month. Teaching teenagers is always a story a minute. Whether it's a student getting a blow job in the stairwell  or .... well, what the fuck tops that? 

Elvira, Coraline and I made an unplanned trip to Iowa last weekend for the funeral of my mom's husband of 30 years. He was only 63, and, although he was being treated for colon cancer, nobody expected him to die. It was the first time all of Mom's kids have been together in over 15 years. Bittersweet in more ways that I can write about here. On that trip, I humiliated myself worse than I can even remember. I will probably tell that story, because I deserve it. I won't tell the heart-breaking parts of the trip, even though I know many of you would relate.

I am not at all surprised I spent Memorial Day weekend -- the dreaded Memorial Day weekend -- in Iowa for a funeral. I wish I could get over the morbid anticipation of this weekend every year, but apparently my dread is entirely rational.

And yet, taking a road trip with my girls was delightful, and I treasure the time we spent together. No, really. Driving 2000 miles with a 2-year-old isn't as hard as it would seem, especially with a Steven King book on CD playing on the stereo.

My son Drake is home this weekend with his handy-penis. (More on Drake's penis later, because it deserves a post of its own.) He's helped me with several projects, and we went to a birthday party last night.

My hero.

While he was off at an amusement park today, I took his black lab/boxer mix Duke for a walk. I always feel safe with Duke, because only a lunatic would fuck with him. Turns out there's a canine lunatic in our neighborhood, and he attacked us. It was terrifying, and hours later I'm still kind of shaky. And Duke is my hero, because he slipped his collar and took care of business just enough for us to get away. I've learned since that several other people, including some children, have been attacked by that dog. I don't know what would have happened if Duke hadn't been with me .... or if Coraline had been with me instead. My imagination needs to focus on something else though .... like how I'm going to take a baseball bat with me on my next walk.

I have some other drama bubbling along in my life like acid in a Vincent Price movie, and I'll be ranting about that after I file the police report. Nothing more I can say until then.

As I write tonight, Drake and one of his high school friends are downstairs in the living room catching up, maybe eating a pizza. I find comfort in their manly presence after the scare I had earlier with the dog. I have a stack of poems and short stories to grade by tomorrow, but I'm going to try working in the morning instead of staying up until 4:00 am. Can't hurt to experiment.

What have you been up to?

Kroger bacon update

Yeah, I took a week off. You get what you pay for around here. Just like the Kroger Value Bacon. 

You remember the whole Kroger bacon fiasco, don't you? I thought I made a pretty persuasive argument for their having cheated me on the meat portion of my package of bacon. Turns out, I was wrong. Here's the letter I received from Sara, my Kroger Customer Connect ambassador, who apparently followed the link in my complaint and read my post about my Kroger bacon experience.

Dear Valued Customer:
Thank you for contacting Kroger Customer Connect. I received your email regarding our Value Bacon. I am so sorry to hear that there were a few nice slices concealing fattier pieces. I assure you this was not done intentionally, and I appreciate that you have brought this to my attention. It is our goal to provide every customer with products and experiences that make them want to return to our stores. I'm so sorry to hear that our Value Bacon has missed that mark in this instance. I have forwarded your comments to our Quality Assurance team on your behalf, so that they may use your observations to make changes that will better your experience with our products in the future. It is my hope that the next time you purchase this product you notice marked improvement. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address your concerns, and thank you for your patronage; have a wonderful day.

I hope that you find this information helpful. My name is Sara and if I can be of further assistance, please simply respond to this email or call 1-800-576-4377.
Thank you for shopping with us.
Sincerely,
SaraKroger Customer Connect The Kroger Family of Stores 

Sara is almost as adept at hiding meaning in her words as someone else at Kroger is at hiding the bacon. While she claims to admit -- probably due to my irrefutable photographic evidence -- that the "nice slices [concealed] fattier pieces," she denies that someone purposefully put partial pieces of bacon meat on top so they would show through the little window.

What was I thinking? Of course they wouldn't. I mean ... they didn't try to fool me. I'm obviously paranoid. They simply "missed that mark." I just happened to get the one unfortunate random package of nasty bacon hidden under 3 pieced together slices of bacon meat. My bad!

What's funny is that she thinks her words are so comforting and reassuring that I will go back to Kroger and buy that shitty bacon again .... because she's going to forward my letter to somebody who will make sure they don't hide the fat again, because they didn't do it on purpose in the first place.

If I were to reply to Sara, I would remind her that I don't fucking trust them now. So why would I trust that my one little blog post would create change in what is undoubtedly a systemic plot to rip off bacon-lovers everywhere?

The only way I would bring that bacon home again is if she gave it to me for free. She didn't dare do that though. I suspect that's because it would have been a Groundhog Day experience.

I should be happy she wished me a wonderful day, I guess.

*****

Two days after Sara emailed me, I received another email from The Kroger Family of Stores. At least I think it was meant for me. It came to my email address. It's hard to tell whom it was meant for though. Here it is.

Dear {address.full_name is NULL},
Thank you for contacting Kroger Customer Connect. In order to improve your experience, you are invited to participate in a brief customer satisfaction survey. 
This survey is designed to measure your customer experience with us; if you would like to participate, please click here. 
Thank you, 
Kroger Customer ConnectThe Kroger Family of Stores

I guess that would be me. "NULL." Sounds pretty close to Reticula, right? Null. That really encourages me to give them high marks for cheating me on my bacon, calling me a liar, and then calling me a zero.

Kroger, this experience was so fantastic I want to shake my poms poms for you. I might even jump up and show everybody my panties and then do the splits. Rah! Rah!

All I can say is that Kroger met my expectations, which were lower than the lean meat content of that package of bacon.

I did my shopping at Aldi yesterday. Doesn't mean I'll never go to Kroger, because it's the most convenient store to me. But when I can, I'll spend my dollars elsewhere .... especially my bacon dollars. Especially all of my bacon dollars.

This has been another whiny blog post by NULL. Over and out.

Is that an electric eel in your pants or .....

Here's a product I find rather shocking. If I understand the video right, these guys learned about a challenge issued by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for someone to design a sexier condom, a "next generation condom."A condom that men would want to wear. They're willing to pay $1 million to the winner.

Go, Bill and Melinda! I would give anything to have so much money I could afford to offer a million bucks to someone for designing a fucking condom. I mean it.

So the first thing these guys thought of was running electrified thread through a condom. You know ..... because the reason men don't like to wear condoms is because normal condoms don't shock their dicks.

They don't share the results of their tests of this electrified condom, but I have a theory about it. See, men usually wear condoms to have sex with women. And I'm guessing most women don't want an electric cock shocking up there inside her vagina during sex. I had the irresistible urge to cross my legs just writing that. Not all women would, of course. Somebody inevitably would like an electrified wiener. Every kink has a kinkster. But most women won't find the whole electric shock therapy for the genitals an improvement over a plain condom. Because while men complain that condoms dull their experience, I'm guessing most women don't like to plug their vaginas into the AC.

Probably the same goes for gay men and their sensitive interior cavities. A man should always ask before he electrifies his partner's ass.

So .... from what I understand the design changed and now the electric penis shocker Electric Eel is more like a remote-controlled penis-shocking hoodie. A garment that is certainly not designed to enter a vagina -- any more than an eel is. (No jokes about fishy smells please.) A garment that probably doesn't do anything to encourage men to put jackets on their penises, but was approved, according to the inventors, by "various sexes."

The video shows one of those various sexes -- I would call him male -- experiencing the electric shocks to the underside of his penis. At least that's the implication. We don't get to actually see his hoodie-wearing penis, which is probably crimson with shame and glad for the hoodie. We just see his face as somebody jolts him with a few random volts over and over.

Charging! Clear!  beep beep beep beep

Let's go back to the original challenge. The Gates Foundation wants a condom that doesn't interfere with men's sexual pleasure. So these guys think electrifying the condom will give a guy the feel of a real vagina?

That's flattering I suppose, but powerful as vaginas are, they don't work by electrocuting men's penises. How would women even take baths if that were the case?

And a hoodie definitely isn't an improvement over a condom. That's just stupid.

Maybe I'm not meant to get this. For $350 an interested investor could have purchased a hand-made Electric Eel through the Indigogo campaign. Unfortunately they only raised $1750 of the $10,000 they wanted to raise, and only 2 people purchased the hand-made Electric Eel. I can't say I'm surprised.

First, this is what an electric eel actually looks like. I can speak for all women except that one exception and say that no woman wants an electric eel in her vagina giving off even low-voltage shocks. This is not sexy -- even in a hoodie. Especially in a hoodie.

And second, why spend $350 when you can get the same effect from putting on a pair of wool socks, shuffling your feet on the carpet and getting a static electric shock from the top of your dog's head or a filing cabinet or even a real live woman?

Or maybe just buy one of those trick hand-buzzers and rock onto Electric Avenue. I know more women who would be willing to put that buzzer on and shock the monkey.

I dunno. I'm not surprised this one didn't get the money. There's such a thing as trying too hard.

And then there's such a thing as trying to make an electric eel condom. That's in an entirely different category of "You're not Bill Gates. You should have stayed in school."

Stop fakin' my bacon

I have a bone to pick. OK, maybe not a bone, because bacon doesn't have a bone. But I'm pissed off, and the thing I'm pissed off about is bacon.

I'm a fan of bacon. I won't go so far as to say my identity is wrapped up in the love of bacon like some people claim theirs is, but I like some tasty, lean bacon. The adjectives are important there.

I grew up in Iowa. Lots of filthy, vicious pigs also grow up in Iowa, and then they become bacon. Some years when I was a kid we made our own bacon and hams. Dad charged us older kids with rubbing the salt into the raw pork until the skin peeled off our hands and the burning became unbearable. It was worth every bit of pain after the meat had cured, and Mom had fried it up in her old cast iron skillet. That level of bacon is not available at the grocery store.

My friend Piano Man makes his own bacon for a big birthday bash he throws every year. It is a religious experience, the taste of this bacon. His bacon is real meat, not fat with a bit of lean meat painted on. It tastes like home, this bacon.

I really do know good bacon, and most of what is available at the grocery store is not what I would consider good bacon. It's OK bacon, if that's all you've got to eat, but a lot of it is more than 50% fat. Some more than 75%. It's disgusting. Like the difference between Wonder Bread and homemade whole-grain artisan bread fresh from the oven. Or the difference between Chips Ahoy cookies eaten with a Capri Sun and a pan of Toll House cookies, hot and fresh, eaten with a glass of cold milk.

But, hey. I'm too lazy to make my own bacon, so I buy what I can tolerate. I sometimes spend 15-20 minutes pulling open the little cardboard windows on the various brands of bacon, looking for a package that's lean enough to be called meat, and I almost always buy the high-end bacon simply because it's leaner than the cheap shit.

So I was surprised when I opened the little window on a package of cheap Kroger-brand bacon and saw how lean it was. I was even a little suspicious, so I pulled the window out and peeked down the length of the slices. It was lean all the way down. Good deal! I bought it.

And I was still pleasantly surprised when I opened it to fry up for brunch when my son Drake and his roommate K were here. I pulled off the first piece and found out it wasn't really a piece. It was half a piece .... but that's OK. The other half was apparently there. Same with the second slice: 2 halves. And the third.

I didn't give a shit if the entire package came in half slices. It was lovely and lean.

Then I got to the fourth slice, which happened to be whole. And looked like this.

Not so much lean meat there. In fact, the entire rest of the package was mostly slices of fat. Somebody had taken the time to put the lean parts of cheater slices under the window to hide what made up the bulk of the pound of bacon.

Thanks a lot, Kroger. You just lost a bacon customer. Not an entire customer, because where else am I going to shop? But I will never buy your bacon again. Fool me once, I'll post about you on my fucking blog. You don't get a second chance.

I am so fucking sick of people trying to rip me off with stupid ploys like this. Did they think I wouldn't notice all that fat? Did they think I wouldn't notice those first 3 slices of bacon weren't whole slices? Is it worth all this to sell me just one pound of bacon, when I could conceivably buy 2 or 3 pounds a month if the product lived up to the promise under the little window? Why is the second pound I might purchase not as important as the first?

It's short sighted and deceptive and mean. I wish I could take my business to another market, but the fact is, I can't afford the up-scale grocery stores out in the suburbs. And besides, there's no guarantee they're any less deceptive.

I am going to join a CSA this summer, and buy whatever fresh vegetables I don't grow myself from a Marianist coop just a few blocks away. That's $400 for 4 months of weekly deliveries of whatever is in season. And that's more than $400 I won't be spending at Kroger. But I will be supporting a group of friendly young people who work their asses off in their gardens, and who have to care about the quality of their products or they won't survive. I wrote about buying produce from them last year here.

I also buy raw milk and farm eggs every 2 weeks in a coop. Coraline loves to drive with me the hour or so it takes to get to the farm and meet the cows. Every time I pour her a glass of milk she says, "Thank you for this milk, cows. I love you."

When it comes to eating out, I rarely go to a chain restaurant. Only if somebody else makes the plans and insists. Otherwise, I eat at places where I know the owner or know the owner lives in town and runs the business. I might pay a little more, but I eat a whole lot better.

I recognize that I'm privileged. This is not poverty-level food. I can afford to pay $5/gallon for my milk and $2.50/dozen for my eggs, and I can pay ahead for my CSA, because I only have to buy food for myself. And I consider myself lucky to live in the city, because I save money by living here, and I've actually found more opportunities to buy local.

OK, I went off on a rant. Not the first time; not the last. That bacon just pissed me off. It represents every corporation that wants to take my money without giving me the product I was promised. It represents how little they care whether I'll buy their product again, because they'll just fool the next 200 people who buy their brand of bacon this week.

And it pisses me off because those first 3 cobbled together slices of bacon really made me want some good lean bacon .... an entire pound of lean bacon. It's not right, to cheat like that. Especially with something as delicious as bacon. Only an asshole would conceive of that.

So I'm considering buying a slab of pork belly from a local butcher and making my own damn bacon from now on. Kroger can go fuck themselves on one more product I used to buy from them. First milk, then eggs, then fresh vegetables, and now bacon.

The moral is this: I don't care what you do to the pig, but do not fuck with my bacon, fatheads. Do not fuck with my bacon.