This is The Bitch’s brain on no sleep. So, I’m flipping through design books and my morgue file (dad was Chief Paperbuoy for a small town newspaper — and I tell ya, if that doesn’t put a crimp in your style when your dad has had nearly every kid in town working for him at one point or another, I don’t know what would). I was working out some ideas for a business identity system I’m creating.

Nothing was coming to me. Solution? Why, stay up all night, turning and burning on something else entirely. Coffee, off-kilter hormonal system (ahem. Don’t even go there!), no sleep…. it does wonders for the creativity sometimes — or not.

So, I see this, a business card I really dig. I love that paper airplane concept. It’s so dang cuuuuuuute.

It hit me like a load of manure from one of WS’s Imaginarium Bulldozers: An advertising campaign with a paper airplane curving and floating from stage left. It does a loop-de-loop and in the midst of it, it’s transformed into a sleek, shiny rocket ship.

“Shoot us a paper airplane, we’ll send you back a rocket.”

Which made perfect sense on the heels of completing a proposal for revamping a Web site. In this case, the design’s mostly done, we’re upgrading the code to HTML/CSS standards. Slick. I’m thinking that the paper airplane to the rocket is just the ticket for describing this particular gig. It’s a beautiful paper airplane already, with CSS it’ll just go faster, sleeker, slicker. A rocket.

Pretty scary, huh?

More scary: tune that’s swirling around me pea brain? ‘Two Princes’ [1] by the Spin Doctors, a song sonshine just loved when he was little. [sigh] He also liked ZZ Top. Spin Doctors has another tune about a bitch, too. Hmmmm. It was my divorce song. HA!

HA!^2. I found the lyrics at a pop up ad-free site. The ‘Two Princes’ lyrics were at Weddingvendors.com. I love it! Imagine someone grooving down the aisle to that tune. All I got is a rocket in my pocket! Marry me, babe.

Damn it! I can’t put my training journal up every day because I haven’t figured out the majikal secret to inserting tables into this interface. It can’t be that hard. Aside from which, I learn the most awesome Stylin’ tricks for CSS over the weekend. It blew my skirt up, lemme tell you. And I want to share.

If anyone has pointers on tables inserted into this joint, lemme know. Otherwise, I’ll put up a separate page. But dang, I wanted an archive of them all, in one handy place. I can sort of see the appeal of blogs, now.

Make your very own at the Einstein Generator!

OKOkok. This is not nearly as funny, but you can laugh at yourself if you’re like me and wondered WHAT THE HELL the whole thing meant and what did I do wrong if the lousy .PDF was all I got. HINT: That’s all you’re supposed to get.

Stupid Halloween Costume Generator.

I’m a totally worthless bitch some days. According to Technorati, I’m a completely worthless Bitch every single day! And it’s all your fault!

If you’re my ex-wife, then that’s how you’d do it: you’d blame your own failure on someone else. Spill a glass of water because you were clumsy? If you’re my ex-wife, you just blame it on whoever happens to be standing around. If you think I’m a Bitch, you should meet her. You know, I should remember to include her as one of my inspirations. Franny was pretty awesome as Bitches go, and completely aware that she was A Bitch (as opposed to my ex-wife). Still, don’t you think that the Biggest Bitches are the ones who don’t think they are?

Want this for your own blog, which is [sigh] probably worth a lot more than mine < / EYEORE >? Just visit this Make.Money.Fast.On.The.Internets Blogger.

Oh buoy! This is almost as fun as sex! I can imagine heaps of these traversing the Internets ™ as people use them to flame each other on e-mail list and in chat forums. I’d like to meet the people who come up with these ideas. Does this promote the BBQ? Smasher.org? Does it matter?

Well, these days, all of the things we intellectuals and assorted intellectual laborers who don’t have to get into the nitty-gritty world of marketing, search engine optimization, Web site promotion, etc. don’t have to think about these things. But, when you start to traverse in that world, you start to see how we’ve innocently (??) participated in the very things “they” wanted for us.

When you start researching this stuff, people were doing dissertations on the way we link to one another and quickly turning that into data, action items, business plans, marketing plans, etc. For what? To sell, silly. It’s valuable information. All the fun stuff we do? It’s all commodified and has been, right underneath our noses and other assorted body parts.

Enjoy this because it’s almost as good as sex. Or a Rabbit, which every Bitch needs and which is why I put it on The Bitch’s Wish List — my little work of art at Amazon. I wonder if Amazon realizes how nicely those things can, likewise, be used to gain free marketing? Hmmmmm?

P.S. My mother won the County Fair pig calling contest when she was eleven. So there. Why is there never anyone to play “I’m more redneck than you” with anyway?

While your pal, The Bitch, was figuring out how to use some plugins (in preparation for working on a business blog for a potential client), I was mucking around with an Amazon tool. Doing so, I kid you not, I stumbled across this gem.

I love Love LOVE it!

Incidentally, I’m soooooo glad I got at this blog. It’s been incredibly useful to spend some time getting into the guts of it to see how it can be used for business blogging.

Did you know that workout and porn tapes/DVDs have a lot in common?

I know, I know. This probably comes as news to you since most people probably don’t do both. Not that I am a connoisseur of either, it’s just that any flippin’ workout video I’ve ever used seems to have a soundtrack developed by a retired porn sound guy or something.

Not only is the auditory aesthetic about the same, the visual aesthetic is too — and I don’t just mean writhing, sweaty bodies in strange positions. I’m talking about the set. It is always cheesy porn aesthetic.

The only exception I’ve come across is Katrina Barillova’s Rapid Readiness Workout. For the genre, it has pretty high production values and it’s challenging. Though not as challenging as the reviews at collegevideo and Amazon might lead you to believe.

It’s not that I’m so totally in shape or anything, they just don’t seem all that hard.

One thing I just can’t stand is the ridiculous Boogie Woogie Boop aerobic workout genre. Man, I need thick workout socks around my ankles like I need a hole in my head. Maybe there’s a point to the moves, but they’re lost on me. Which is why I tend to stick with anything in the kick boxing genre.

There seems to be a purpose to the things you do. You may not plan on getting into a match any time soon, it’s just that’s there’s a reason you do something — it comes from a long tradition. Maybe the grapevine comes from a long, time-honored tradition. I don’t know. But I just can’t see how it’s particularly challenging, other than the challenge of coordination. I can hear an instructor now:

“Ready at home? [Bounce. Bounce] We’re getting ready to move into the grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrapevine. [Bounce. Bounce. Hop-hop-hop] Ready? Here we go! 1 - 2 - grrrrrrrrrrapevine 3 - 4. Feel that burn. 1 - 2 graaaaaaaaaaapevine 3 - 4. Feel that burn?”

The Bitch: Uh, no? No burn here. You? Oh, and just thought I’d point out that the one behind you, the brunette? If she keeps bouncing around like that, her tit’s going to fly right out of her wonderbra, yanno?

R got me Tae Bo once and Sonshine got me Billy Blanks’ follow up series, Contact. The Contact series sucked hind tit. It’s OK, but it’s definitely for beginners. The inflatable dick they provide for pretending like you have a bag to kick is pretty wild, though. I never use it because, damn, I’d rather take a poke at the bag. I have a few more Tae Bo tapes for variety, things I scrounged at yard sales. Exercise vids and equipment can be soooo wonderfully plentiful and cheap because we lack discipline or get thrilled by the notion that some thing — some machine, some tape, some regimen — will make it all seem easy.

So, for over a year, I haven’t done jack when it comes to working out. I’ve sat on my fat ass getting waaaaaaaay out of shape. Not. Cool. So, a few weeks ago, I decided to get back on it. I might need to work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, but I could squeeze in some time for something healthy, right? Right.

But, oh joy! I fractured my knee and sprained both ankles, with some weird shin thing going on to boot. No such thing as money for a doctor, so it was heal at home. Waah. Soooooooo, welcome to the Training Journal! My way of kicking my own ass every mother lovin’ day. I think I’ll still keep my oldtraining journal going at Lyle’s place but, mostly, I really hate forum sites. Bleh.

Now, let’s see if this POS works like I’d hoped.

(It doesn’t work! I had made a nifty table which I could update daily, complete with how many minutes of cardio and what I’d lifted that day, if it was a lifting day.

If anyone knows how to plug an HTML table in to this $&%^(!@&%^ thing, let me know.)

Dwayne Monroe brings up the Raunch Feminism discussion again, pointing us at Momus’s blog, Click Opera.

Joanna asks about a surgical procedure that porn actresses apparently get all too frequently: they have surgery to make their labia look smaller. Henwood points out that it’s “supposed to” look small and tight — with the emphasis on “supposed to” because he knows that there’s no natural “supposed to” about it.

Well, obviously, it’s an obsession of the porn industry because, if it’s big and loose, then the girl is lose. Can’t have that. The porn star’s lips must look tight ‘n’ small, all the better to believe no one’s ever penetrated those lips ever before.

If our culture ever stops producing men with a Madonna/Whore complex, I’ll probably drop dead if I haven’t already bitten the dust. I could rant about the M/W complex, which is present in every single man I’ve ever known, but one and even he had issues every so often. But, seriously, men have to be the most hung-up-on-sex creatures on the planet. Women are, conventionally, supposed to have all the sex hang ups. Not true in my experience. It’s men who ultimately think that putting out is all about sharing your most intimate self, which is why they never really put out.

As for so-called Raunch Feminism I can’t work up enough to give a bat’s eyelash. Of course someone would be pacing and puffing over the phenom. It’s girls and women doing this horrid/crazy/weird/titillating thing that is going on among women. How often does anyone get in a tizzy over Raunch Masculinity, asking themselves whether or not it’s just natural or are these poor buoyz warped by Culture? When are people going to ask about the way men behave, “Is it real or is it Memorex?”

Huh?

So, Kipinis’s book looks like just another opportunity to wring one’s hands over the behavior of young people these days. Like Bill Cosby getting in a lather over black people who supposedly spend their money on sneakers rather than buy educational software (one of Cosby’s side businesses, btw). As if he knows, with any certainty, what Blacks do with their money.

I’d like to know who exactly is claiming that Raunch Feminism is liberatory. Hmmmm. Name me one feminist that does this?

I’m sure there is, but is there, like, an actual movement? And who cares anyway? Maybe it IS liberatory for them. Who is to say it’s not? Some asshole with 9 credits of undergraduate psych courses who thinks she can analyze the complicated lives of a handful of women on the basis of a few interviews?

Spare me.

Who’s it hurting if women bare their midriffs, wear fake nipples, and pull their thongs up well beyond their asscrack so you can admire it.

By the way, who wears a frickin’ thong anyway? I got a look at my almost DIL’s a few weeks ago. The dog likes to drag them out of the bedroom, drop to the floor near my feet, and have a good slobber fest all over her underwear. He also likes tampons. So, it’s this little “nude” barely there thong and I thought, “Why the fuck bother wearing this? Freeball it sweetie, because this thang ain’t doing nothin’ ‘cept riding up your crack.”

I can’t see the point to the dental floss thongs. They don’t keep your slacks out of your ass or prevent your skirt from getting tucked up in your crack, right? OK, so maybe I have a weird ass, but I can’t see how the thong is supposed to help me. I KNOW my skirt would get caught right up there and I’d be walking around looking like Miss Towle.

Maybe a raunch feminist can write and explain why dental floss thongs are worth wearing. Save money and join the Freeballers of America association!

So, back to my question: who does it hurt if women have sex like men or dress like, uh, sluts?

Do you honestly think that doing so sets women back? How?

Does acting white set blacks back? Does acting like the mythical wretched “thugs” that Cosby and WS the asschomp worry about set blacks back? If it does, maybe it’s just about the idiotic stereotypes we hold. And also ask yourself: would there be no more shit jobs and no more shit wages if every black acted white? Would women’s pay improve or the range of occupations expand if they started acting like men or started dressing less like, uh, ‘whores’? Would it change if they acted “ladylike”?

None of it’s helped yet. So, I think nothing much will change and nothing much is harmed if women engage in so-called “Raunch Feminism”. This economy thrives on poor wages and closed off opportunities. Not everyone can have a good job, a good paycheck, or a good education. It’s the nature of the system.

Maybe that’s why we have these stereotypes, eh?

Just heard on the news, blarring from the normally silent (unless there’s a hurricane) TeeVee in the other room. Fitzgerald just pushed his groping lovers away, wiped the smeared lipstick off his lips, tugged his skirt down from around his waist and said, “I’m just not ready yet.”

If a collective sigh of disappointment falls across the Blogosphere, does anyone hear it?

I am chapping my own ass today. I meant to reply to Martin about the perverted flambe (it takes one to know one) and write a little disquisition on pity parties. Weird connectivity problems meant I was dealing with that all night. Plus I spent way too much time applying for a job. So, I will get to it later. Taking care of things that will make money is a priority.

Heh. I love Jesus’ General. Don’t read him lately, I’m just too busy. However, I was updating the Bitch Guide while waiting for a but-ton of email to download. (Connectivity problems!). While explaining the term, Holy Underoos, I came across a link to the General’s Cafepress Store and saw this charming self-fucker’s mug on some of the General’s merch.

to work for this guy, one Mr. James Dilworth, who runs ExperienceThis.

I discovered his advice for job seekers answering CraigsList ads. Suzie Bright linked to the Craig’s Top TwentyTen. I didn’t end up looking at whatever Suzie was on about, since Dilworth’s ad caught my eye. I’d anticipated a biting piece about all the wankers who post ads expecting people to apply for work paying $1/hr. I kid you not! On the local Craigslist, there are people who actually want you to work for $1/hr. For an e-commerce site!

Dilworth is my kinda guy. I wonder if he’d put up with The Bitch? Of course he would! The Bitch kicks ass and takes names later when it comes to putting out for the right kind of exploiter. Jaymz Dilworth will think he’d died and gone to heaven. :)

He has a position for a product manager which is right up The Bitch’s alley. But dayum! They don’t pay relocation costs. Well, you know, if he’d help us find a place to live, I’d be happy to charge up the old credit cards and go work for someone I can respect.

Having worked for small companies all my life, I know exactly what I’m getting into: a lot of work. But, in my experience, it’s always interesting and challenging work. I’m so used to wearing a variety of hats, I have no idea how I’d deal with a narrowly defined job. In the past, even when at a larger company, it was impossible for me not to get into whatever job I had. If there was a way to do it better or meet customers needs, it was hard to ignore it and just shut my mouth.

Of course, Manwich would have all kinds of good criticisms of that! As would Mike Ballard, I’m sure. But, you know, I can’t get into the whole opposition to work thing. I think people realize their humanity in and through work. It may not be the ideal place to do that, here and now, but we experience glimpses of the possibilities of such a world every once in awhile, don’t you think?

Awhile ago, we passed the hat, asking those interested to donate a buck.

We really meant it and were really taken aback when people donated more. If you’ve since asked how to contribute, you might have noticed that I didn’t respond.

Why? Because I was horrified. True, we desperately needed it and still do. I was still horrified at what a White Trash bubble I live in. In my world, people don’t have $25 to spare to give to a stranger, let alone $50 or $100. It made me realize just what less generous people must have thought. It made me realize just how little I share with so many people. [1]

Burst my bubble, so to speak.

Yesterday, I got a note from a guy I used to write to, someone who’s been reading the blog and belongs to the e-mail undiscussion list. He thought I might have been talking about him when I mentioned “assholes” in my life. I got the impression he thought I was pissed because he hadn’t donated money.

I suspect there are others who think this is all motivated by that. Klew: It’s not.

It is a culmination of any number of things, but it’s mainly about maintaining my sanity.

It chaps my ass, even as I completely understand the process. Maybe R will write everyone a little letter about my annoying habit of seeing all sides of things, about how the notion that I’d only ever have a chapped ass over something, and not turn around and try to understand it at the same time, is laughable to him. In his estimation, I’m fair to a fault.

He’s often observed how someone can shit all over me and I’ll turn around, don the sociologist’s hat and explain why the person did it. Not in terms of psychoanalysis, necessarily, but in terms of institutions and social structure. This both fascinates and annoys him, annoys him because while I certainly get hopping pissed, I am sometimes far too levelheaded for his tastes.

So, if you think I’m pissed at you because you didn’t send money to the LD Fund, nothing could be further from the truth, you assholes. :) Now, get over yourself already. I have a lot of shit going on, stuff I can’t even blab about in public. I have friends and family in my life who are assholes, too.

(ADD: I will never, ever be able to stop loving people, in all their glory. But don’t you get it? I need to bitch right now in order to maintain that love of the world. I can’t see a therapist or drink or do drugs like so many people do. So, I’m bitching!)

All we wanted was for people to throw in a buck and encourage others to throw in a buck. We didn’t want anyone to lose sleep over it or worry that we’d all disintegrate if you were broke or didn’t trust us or whatever. We had no idea that people thought we wanted more than a buck. We figured we’d do things the www.savekaryn.com way.

I’m a bitch, but I’m an understanding bitch.

So, that’s why there’s no donation link. I regret ever having sent that e-mail.

To the Bitch Lover who clicked! When I say every penny counts, I mean it!