question, answer.

via the hairpin.

So I've been "seeing" (i.e. boning) this guy for a couple weeks. I haven't gone down on him yet because I wasn't sure he'd reciprocate and that pisses me off. So tonight, he said "you're not too much of a feminist to go down on a guy, are you?" to which I responded truthfully that I'm not, DUH. I actually really enjoy it (but, I do have issues with people who feel it's perfectly fine for me to go down when they find the reverse unappealing). Then he goes, "good, because I'm too masculine to go down on a girl." UM, WHAT!? was my inner response although I'd sort of expected it since he hadn't made any moves (but was still kind of hoping he'd come around; he's a bit inexperienced/very young and I thought maybe he was just afraid to botch it). I told him that some dudes love it, at which point he told me some dudes are weird and asked if I'd ever done it (negative, for the record, which seemed to weaken my point in his eyes).

So here's my question: this is what I want, but I feel weird/manipulative holding BJs hostage in return for something he clearly isn't interested in/ready for. Is it unfair to pressure him like that? Plus, it's obviously no fun for me if he's gritting his teeth (so to speak) through the whole thing. But at this point I also don't want to give him a free ride on my mouth. Should I lose this guy or is there an appropriate and effective way to approach this? Oh, also, we work together. Also, is he gay? I have never encountered this before.


WELL. First? Too much of a feminist? I like to think of myself as a "male ally" in really the most humorless of Dude-Feminist fashions. I also really like a blowjob now and again. And since I was wary of defensively mainsplaining around this particular topic, I wound up googling "feminist blowjobs" before answering this question. Thankfully, the feminist blogosphere gave up a post by the fantastic Jill Filipovic (one of the many smart feminist bloggers this Dude reads frequently).

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2006/06/19/feminist-politics-of-blowjobs/

Her post has to do with some kind of blowjob-related Internet blog controversy–the originating posts of which appear to no longer be online–but nevertheless is pretty independently cogent on the score of how mutually respectful partners can start a conversation about de-patriarching the oral. (If they want to! Choices for everyone!)

But back to like the advice I guess? I don't even wanna execute a search for "too masculine to get face down in a vagina." Essentially, this is because you say this guy is young. I have no idea how old you are, nor what "very young" means to you–but I think you should a) try not to take this personally and b) blame it on his age. He doesn't know the gospel of vagina worship! He has not accepted the well-pleasured clit as his personal redeemer! That's cool. It calls to different men at different times. But even an inexperienced dude is aware of the power and mystery of the whole god-shaped vagina-kissing-hole in his soul–and can be a little bit scared by that emptiness in his repertoire. For all I know, your guy may have just recently figured out how to get his dick-swerve on, and he might want to stay within the realm of the familiar and be feeling that power for a while. Presumably you're into what he's capable of doing on that level, and so there's no immediate reason to boot him.

Still, his semi-hostile narrowness on the oral front obviously has the potential to bring you down in a comprehensive way over the long haul. Ultimately you'll want him to trust you enough to bust through his comfort zone and get down. There are ways you can help him through this, instead of turning it into a blowjob-withholding fight straight from the drop–especially since it seems you're significantly older, and since you like giving blowjobs. (SIDE NOTE: pretending not to like things that you actually do like will only make things more confusing for a young guy. Or hell, for lots of older guys, too. Avoid doing this, if at all possible.)

A guy who is told that other guys like things or can do things that he doesn't do in the bedroom will often react by calling those other guys "weird." Those other boys are the ones with the problem, got it? That's natural, because he's feeling inadequate. But you know what else is natural? Being sexually proud as fuck that you're with an older chick who TEACHES YOU THINGS IN THE BEDROOM. If you can turn him into that character, psychologically, he'll sign up for all the advanced placement tests. Has he met your older friends? Maybe he should! And maybe when you're all out for drinks, one of them can casually tell your boy-not-yet-a-man how impressed she is that he can hang with you. How he's really stepping up and being a man by vaulting from his age cohort and into yours. There are other ways to do this. You get the idea. You're going to solve the problem of repertoire-fear long before you solve the problem of men being entirely too much in thrall to their egos. But one outta two ain't bad.

Quattro Zaaaaany!

NO IDEA if this is even funny..(I'm at work and feel that watching this video on the clock may cross the line)... but what a name.. QUATTRO ZAAAAAAANY!!

http://splitsider.com/2010/12/today-in-four-loko-parodies/#more-1891

Bowing at the altar of Laurie Anderson

FW: You’ve produced an amazing amount of work. What keeps you going?

Anderson: I don’t mean to sound shallow, but it’s the best way to have fun, you know? For me it’s just sort of goofing around. It really is – it’s like “Oh I think I’ll make a cartoon today. No, I think I’ll make a song.”

You know, so when you call yourself this amorphous mutlimedia artist thing, you just do whatever you feel like and people go “oh that’s your work, ok fine,” and that’s how it is.

FW: One last question. As someone who’s been incredibly successful with their work, do you have any advice for those of us living here, holding down three jobs just to pay the rent and trying to find the time to make art?

Anderson: You know when I started being an artist I had this friend who said really irritating things to me. I would say “Look Richie, you don’t understand. I really wanna do my work, but, I’ve gotta pay my rent.

And he would just kept saying “Just do your work.”

And I’d say “No no, Richie, come on, it’s just not practical, I mean I have my rent is due in like a week, I have to be practical.”

And he would just keep saying “Do your work.”

And it made me so mad, but I finally realized what he was saying. He was talking about priorities. What do you really want? What do you put first? If you do your work, and you put all of your best energy into that, everything else will fall into place. And, you know, if you make paying your rent your very first priority, well then it will be harder to do your work. If you want this amazing apartment that looks like an artists loft or whatever, you’ll get that, but you might not be able to do any work because you’ll be putting all your energy into getting that place.

I found that at times very hard to take, but it’s really true. Because you know, it’s trusting yourself. That you have something good to say, and that it’s worth saying. That’s what you have to do as an artist. Nobody else’s really going to do it, everything comes from you.

[free williamsburg]

How To Cure Moustache Envy

And it was only fifty cents! But I'm pretty sure a real one wouldn't come off when you puke in your sleep after 11 Milwaukee's Best(s?). So color me still envious.

Copy this and send it to all parents and relatives

cause the NYT sez it's ok to fuck around for YEARS after schoolin:


After graduation, I spent five years wandering around doing nothing — or getting as close to it as I could manage. I was a cab driver, an obsessed moviegoer, a wanderer in the mountains of Colorado, a teacher at a crazy grand hippie school in Vermont, the manager of a movie house (who didn’t do much managing), a crewman on a ship and a doorman at a disco.


Thanks, NYT!

PUNK!

RE: lost generationz

defeated? resigned? no fuckin way, broad.

"Mothers, don’t let your children grow up to be hipsters. We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new."


I used to believe this, that our world was over and we were nothing but vultures picking at its rotting corpse... but I really don't anymore. The things that have formed our culture might be dead and dying-- sincerity, huge record labels, hypercapitalism, etc, but there are new, better things popping up in their stead. Self-awareness, self-distribution and small, community oriented projects are growing out of the ashes of those bloated tenets of our modern era.

I don't really know what hipster means in 2010, but in 1959 it meant someone who listened to jazz, liked drugs and wrote/read things that used the word "fuck." I have a feeling that when we say hipster we mean people who listen to noise/folk/punk/jazz, like drugs and read/write things that use the word "fuck." In much of the discourse that labels itself "concerned with American ideals", you'll come across phrases like "standing for something", "hard work" and talk of "freedom" "bravery" and "prosperity." Simultaneously, you'll notice that our armed forces kill civilians around the world with a frequency that suggests they enjoy it, while our elected officials have left a fifth of the children in their own country to live in poverty. And this is largely thanks to that "peace and love" generation who later built corporate America over former farms and forests and parked their SUVs in the driveway.

So if we are defeated, it's because we recognize the gross mismanagement of funds and passion by the people who call themselves leaders of the free world, and if we are destroyed it's because we don't know how to change that. Instead, we throw pebbles into the void, listen to noise/folk/punk/jazz, like drugs and read/write things that use the word "fuck." The more people who opt out of our modern corporate nightmare, the fewer bombs dropped in its name. "Hipsters" might not "stand for anything," but they've got my vote.

s00000 ghey for these bros

[when i was younger, i wanted to have 5 kids and name them for each member of the strokes. nick and nicolai could get confusing.]

Re: Crash and Burn

So what's a TOTALLY creative, complete renaissance girl Reagan's kid to do?

Well, you already answered your own question with that one. Go out and get laid anyway!

As your sister in living rent free/jobless/just tryna experience something real, grrrrl have I been there.

When criticism from the world at large (parents, other family members, clueless friends, etc) arises, I like to do two things: 1) look at their lives, and ask myself if that's something I aspire to, and 2) reach into my arsenal of humans who I do think lived badassedly ie the way I wish to live in general, and ask myself what they would think. More often than not, I think that they would be like, "fuck yeah. I never had a real job or a mortgage either!" If Allen Ginsberg ever walked up to me and was like, "what the hell are you doing? stop it!" I sure as shit would. Until then, I'm gonna keep believing that what I'm doing (or not doing) is ok because I'm ok with it.

Kinda just think that the world is full of people who just don't "get it" (as illustrated by the fact that the world is falling the fuck apart), so I'm not too quick to get down on one who decides to say "f that shit" and avoid the trappings of modern life at all costs.

Personally, I think your response of the creative realm being different is completely valid. The problem is that our dumb world places value on monies more that anything else so it's hard for people normalized by this culture to see the other things you've "earned" this year: an awesome portfolio, great experience and lots of contacts.

Maybe just in the interest of preserving your rent-free way of life for the time being, it would be worth having a sit down with the roommates and telling them your plans and your reasons for your life choices, internship, etc. All parents really want is their kids to have some idea of what they want to do, and surprisingly think that their kids are totally clueless. I've had SO many convos with my madre re: this topic, while I am FREAKING out because I can't do what I want to do and stress about "the future" ALL the time, while she's asking me if I ever think about "the future."

So yeah. You just gotta like do what you wanna do, while attempting to keep the roommates happy. Sucks that they don't understand the world, so you gotta do your best as a liason. Also, if you are interested in earning dollars, is there any after-school art program or something you could work at? Maybe not with li'ls, but high school kids could be fun.

(just read Dan Savage and am feeling all advice columny, apparently.)

Welp, I'm about to go to an interview for a barrista job! Hopefully my future co-workers will be 19 and hot.

some advice from Das Racist (the hip hop duo)

So what’s the message you guys are trying to send out to the youth of today?

H: “Calm down. Calm the fuck down.”

V: “Shut up, dude.”

H: “Shut up and calm down.”

V: “Chill the fuck out, bro.”

H: “Sit still for a minute and just shut up and calm down. A lot of people got it worse than you, bitch.”

GETS IT

from an interview of this guy on the street:

I don’t use a computer because I only handwrite people.

You don’t tweet?

Tweet? No, dude, I’m not that important. Who wants to hear about how I wiped my ass or how I had scrambled eggs for breakfast?

Iggy and Slash.

Actually I had pumpkin pancakes today. Every gift I give is handmade, because that’s what I do. I sit at home with a glue-stick under black light, Christmas lights, and a candle burning. That’s what I like because it keeps me warm and when I make things I have a ball.

Nez Perce Baby

I found this pic of a lil nez perce baby and it reminded me of those AWESOME papooses and other sweet Native arts we saw @ the PAM! Let's make things and grow food, k?

goggleimaged AcidBro for this picture

they look like h3ll@ l@m3 tw33ns

"Every day, u have the opportunity to brand yourself–you have the opportunity to let the world know that you are a person, and within this person is a brand which the whole world can consume."
--carlesbro

Today I had a "meeting" and we drank champagne! I was in the back hoping no one would notice I kept refilling my tiny plastic glass. then the full-timers were complaining about how annoying their health insurance plan is. Fuck you, bros. I have to avoid tween moshers when I go out cause I can't afford to get my face broke.

Have you read this? The writing is kinda boring/ self-important, actually, but it's fun to see what they thought. Haven't gotten to number one yet. Need to print out food stampz form before I do. Kill me.
This is what P4k says about "Galang":
Forget the Grammys-- what M.I.A. really deserves recognition for is her unwavering dedication to the onomatopoeic and the staccato; the hard consonant and the long vowel; the simple pleasure-giving properties of words. "Galang" may be patois for "go on," but the word's real currency, she suggests, is in its stackability, the way it piles on top of itself to galang-a-lang-a-lang. A similar feeling-over-meaning instinct informed many of her future artistic choices, including those related to the complicated and not easily untangled circumstances of the Sri Lankan civil war. Despite its artist-conferred status as protest music, the video for "Galang" features M.I.A. dancing in a stylized wonderland of neon-bright graffitied iconography (bombs, tigers, machine guns) that wears insurgency and inequality like fashion. To a continent that's often guilty of doing exactly that, "Galang" rang to some as troublesome, a criticism that M.I.A. forcefully rejected without ever convincingly explaining away. This willful conflation of style and substance-- and a stubborn refusal to separate one from the other-- has become a constant in her career. It's what makes her relevant and worthy of thought and discussion, and it began here.

Hell yes. she is our Spirit animal. (lots of people probably think that, but they don't really "get it")

I've made a bunch of postcards with those back-of-the-free newsweekly ads of transsexual prostitutes. I don't know if they'll even be delivered, since the USPS is government-owned, and I'm not sure if they like transsexual prostitutes.

Today I saw a bunch of people protesting Pell Grants or something, saying that education without guaranteed jobs is fraud. I'm confused. They didn't look like they had the capacity for irony, although that would be a cool project. We should do that. But I wanted to be like, no shit, bros. Market is saturated with "grads" who have "learned things" and have nothing to apply it to. Some guy I work with was a "linguistics major." Probably thought he was gonna be the next Noam Chomsky and now does menial tasks for low wages. Ho hum.


Welp all the bosses are gone so it's time for me to make use of the color copier! Hell yes. Justifying my existence one stolen good at a time.

have fun with yr tacos......... save me some or somethin!