Velvet Verbosity

I’m going to apply to Bennington College for the low residency MFA in writing. Oh, I feel free!

1. Forget to pay the utility bill and then act surprised when the computer won’t turn on in the morning. (For a double flunk, find a way to blame it on the children!)

2. Sleep through your alarm and get to work an hour and a half late. (For a double flunk, show up with Dunkin Donut crumbs on your chin and sleepy seeds still in the corners of your eyes.)

3. Check your myspace. (Double F points for doing this while eating a banana freeze-pop and neglecting dishes in the sink.)

4. Think mean things about the other moms at your daughter’s lacrosse practice. (Double flunk by actually telling Mrs. “I’m so upper-middle class and proud of it” that you like her shirt and that your mother has one just like it that you bought her for Christmas.)

5. When your teenager bites your head off because she’s “hot and grumpy” and then stomps off to her room, make a face at her retreating back. (Oh, the possibilities for double-flunking this one are endless!)

6. Chew Juicy Fruit with your juicy boyfriend at the office. (Double F for chewing two or more pieces at a time. Loudly.)

To answer the question, “How can you double flunk anything?”, this is my blog and I make the rules ’round here (as well as the lies). Understood?

Dear young man,

I know you like me. I notice the way you look at me when I come in, the way your heavy eyelids raise to reveal the light in your blue blue eyes, and how they send sparkles my way. You must know you are much much too young for me. Still, I am flattered because I see the gentle intelligence inside you.

When you smile at me, I think it sad that you don’t believe in yourself more. It’s evident in the way you dress, that ridiculous hat worn sideways, the tattoes on your arms, the sloppy clothes.

You deserve more than this night job, and somewhere inside you lives that spark. Get out of here. Take off that silly hat, comb your hair, take classes, and make yourself who you were born to be. More than this. More than shy smiles offered to the woman 10 years older than you. You deserve a young woman who will love you sweetly, and who knows how to receive all that light in your eyes.

Don’t smile at me with that feeble hope. Take that hope and polish it, make it burn, and then swallow it so that it sets fire to your belly, spreads to your limbs and moves you. Get out of here while you still can.

The next time I walk in here late at night, a small stop on my journey home, I don’t want to see you. I want to look up and see instead a young boy with transluscent flesh and dull eyes. I want to wonder if you read this, and took my advice. I want to think of you building, block by block, the life that you deserve.

Are guys just jerks led around by their genitalia? Are strong women just bitches?

Yes. No. Neither. Both. Crikey, I don’t have the answer people!

But I did find this insightful post from a guy’s perspective. Touches on why men sometimes behave badly towards women, how some men do still want the dumbed down version, and illuminates why we women need to continue to be smart and whole, and all of that, but also why it wouldn’t hurt to be a little bit soft and a little bit nice.

Link here.

You might have guessed by now that I have been spending a lot of time perusing the internet. Firstly, my Dad (the one who was sooooo against the internet 10 years ago, and who now has 5 computers running simultaneously. In the same room.) turned me onto NetVibes, and I’ve gone RSS Feed wild! How positively excellent that I can sign in to one website and have all my favorite news, weather, blogs, etc. in one place, all categorized and tabulated, and as I want it! People, I am fat with information!

Which brings me to the second interesting thing I found today. A new book, “On My Own: The Art of Being a Woman Alone”. Wonderful. No, I mean it. It’s probably going to really save some woman’s soul. But the fact that we still have to write books like this for women rankles me. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes we all need some guidance in learning how to be whole. I myself spend a lot of time sitting on a meditation cushion in order to discipline my mind into believing there is nothing at all wrong in the world. (Ok, ok, most of the time I ignore the fact that there is a whole meditation area in my living room, complete with chant books, candles, and cool incense. So sue me.)

What makes me snort like an angry bull about this kind of book is that it is a symbol, an indicator that women are still being programmed to believe that we are inherently incomplete without partnership.

Women, please, for the love of all that is good in you, just stand up and be whole already! With or without a partner. With or without children. We vote, we work, we enjoy sex, we even (according to the latest issue of Bust magazine) avail ourselves the pleasures of the cornucopia of young foreign hotties. So what. is. the. problem.?

Can’t help but to think that there are several adult men who need to read this just as much as the surly teenage boy living in my basement. That same boy whose head still smells like the day he was born to me.

Working in the tech industry, you might think I had heard about Second Life before a month ago. Well, you would have been wrong. I had no idea that over two million people are creating “second lives” and living for several hours a day in a virtual world. Dude…these people have even created a virutal economy and somehow, that virtual money is translating into real money. What? How does that work and not completely tip the universe over due to what has to be multiple infractions on the laws of physics.

Is anyone paying attention? If you think this is only for certain “freakish” people, I will have you know that Harvard conducts classes in this virtual world. On a virtual island. At a Tiki Bar.

Then again, I know some pretty freakish Harvard people. (No L, I’m not talking about you. You are not freakish at all. Except for that thing with the thing last year.)