If you’ve been reading the site for at least the last two weeks, you know I talk about Craigslist a lot. Which probably makes you suspect that I spend most of my days cruising the Missed Connections, trying to negotiate myself into being a “tattooed Filipina” or someone who has a reason to go to a bank.
Harsh realities aside, sometimes I’ll take a break and comb the writing gigs for something that suits me. I haven’t found any ads looking for someone who knows way too much about Blossom’s hat collection yet, but I have found this:
It’s brave to actually come out and admit – in caps lock – that you have a story so devoid of quality that you’re unanimously told that it needs to be on Lifetime. Unless they’ve left out “TEEN PREGNANCIES AND A CYBER STALKER” in between “HARDSHIP” and “FUN LAUGHTER,” I don’t see it taking off. But I’m probably just bitter because no one seems to want “Tall blonde with numerous ranch dressing stains.”
I watch a lot of poor quality television, and while I stand by my Designing Women, one bargain basement I won’t venture into is the exploitative dankness of TLC.
The TLC network is a Bristol Stool Scale of mediocrity and while it stands to reason that eventually, they will choose to replace at least one component of their overweight, pregnant, little person trifecta with actual substance, it now seems more probable that they will just combine them all and mix in the ups and downs of owning and operating a frozen yogurt shop.
But, until they find their new star of Twist and Shout: Pregnant, Obese and Little, they will have to do what they can to glorify pregnancy and parenthood through average women. Reading through the casting description reveals that this will be a “web video series,” which is second only to internet petitions in efficacy, and will likely consist mostly of women displaying their morbid collection of unused baby paraphernalia on suspiciously nice couches.
I admit, my knowledge of TV production is so crippled that well, TLC would probably want to come film it and turn it into a desperate quest for ratings. But, I do know that using women to film their own experiences while solidifying a lucrative deal with Church & Dwight in exchange for closeups of the golden shower that their First Response pregnancy tests will receive is pretty savvy. Savvy here means the same thing it does in TLC’s show description – shameless.
However, in their defense, subtly perpetuating the intrinsic xenophobia and subordination of the Quiverfull movement is a full-time job. So while TLC is still actively searching for ‘triplets or more’ in a casting for Make Room for Multiples, it’s only fair that women who can only produce one uninteresting, non-obese baby at a time film their own “emotional passage to pregnancy.”
The best part though is that they use a gmail address, which clearly reflects all the foresight you can expect from a network that boasts a show dedicated entirely to babies being born in toilets. Come on TLC, I use gmail and it’s usually just to order pizza online. Get your shit together or at least honor this colossal joke with a hotmail account.
I am rarely ever able to take advice. And, despite what you may be thinking, this isn’t a roundabout way for me to say that I listen to Papa Roach and fasten my pants with a belt buckle shaped like a gun. Instead, it’s a way to express that sometimes I am just a different kind of moron.
When I was in middle school, I made myself look like Eddie Munster’s twin, only with more hair product and eyeliner. My dad, as delicately as could be, suggested I go the more natural route. However, that only caused me to increase the amount of hair spray I used, which curiously seemed to have a direct relationship with the number of people who would be willing to see my boobs.
When I was in high school, my parents pleaded with me to take driver’s ed so I could get my license and have a life outside of watching Shipmates and fashioning dildos out of tampons. I refused, mostly because I was too busy taking Latin online. As a result, I got my license at the age of 21.
When I was in college, I was urged to major in anything other than Art History in order to ensure that my degree would mean more than my ability to offer up the history of the paper it was printed on.
But, I own my mistakes. I would even go so far as to say that I cuddle my mistakes at night and seductively whisper in their ear that they’re not mistakes in my eyes and they’ll be all like ‘You’re just saying that’ and I’ll just kind of smile since they have no idea. Because for me, my mistakes comprise a chain of the happiest accidents I could ever hope for. I was hideous for years, which meant that it didn’t matter that I had no life in high school, which then led to me majoring in Art History because really, the only thing more tailored for losers would’ve been ‘Anime’, and here I am – grateful for all of it.
This is why I think Steven Ward should be hung by his scrotum from a meat hook and forced to drink Clamato while watching re-runs of Night Court. If you’re unfamiliar with the name, I don’t blame you. But, Steven Ward is a self-proclaimed matchmaker who asserts that he is, “on a mission to bring love into peoples’ lives one soul at a time.” Since bringing love into peoples’ lives goes hand in hand with having a reality show on VH1, guess how I know about this poor man’s Matt LeBlanc?
They're totally fucking.
He, along with his mother JoAnn, host Tough Love – a show full of so much bullshit, it makes Dick Cheney look like the kind of guy you’d go out drinking with and trust to drive your car back at the end of the night. The premise is simple – assemble a group of women who can’t find men because of commitment issues, career obsession, body image or all of the above. Then, he fixes them by instructing that they all stop being such sluts. With its assumption that women need to take it upon themselves to keep a relationship or risk being thrown away like an old pair of underwear because the elastic has broken, Tough Love is a feminist’s worst nightmare. Luckily, I’m not a feminist. I’m just kind of irked in a way that makes me uncomfortable. The differences may be negligible, I understand, but I don’t want to harp about slut shame or how this show, along with Tucker Max, hurts society.
My issue is that choice is stripped of these women all so they can find a man with just the right amount of tribal tattoos as to be bad ass, but at the same time employable. They are advised on how to conduct themselves in the company of men (usually this means that they don’t say anything at all) and since most of these women are both dependent on alcohol and estranged from their child’s father, it is not pessimistic of me to assume that they will make mistakes along the way. The biggest one most likely being that they signed up to be on a VH1 reality show. But they’re Steve Ward’s mistakes as delivered to him by the umbilical cord he undoubtedly still shares with his mother.
Point is – never take anyone’s advice seriously. Unless of course it’s coming from a 20-something who just ate a sleeve of Oreos in her Snuggie. Only then does it make sense.
OK, so Mother wouldn’t help him put his hilarious Halloween costume together. Now he’s waving his dick around like a gun, holding the entire internet hostage until someone lonely enough accepts his offer to mix some “stuff.” I mean, I didn’t get invited to any Halloween parties this year (don’t worry, these are happy tears), but I have to think that if I did, then I would have enough friends to help me make a lifelike mold of my genitals. That is how friendship works…right?
Anyway, I’ve assisted in making a penis mold. The only difference is that it wasn’t kind of kit where you can make a usable (or chocolate) replica of your penis, because I chose the cheap route and bought one of those precious memories kits from a craft store. So instead of a baby’s foot or prayer hands, I got a ceramic dick that was at least 2/3 of the way to pleasure town. But that’s not the point.
The point is that I had to perform a sex triathlon to keep my dude at the time hard enough to get my $15 worth. It wasn’t easy and I’m pretty sure one of those soft-core Showtime pornos where everyone is dressed like Charles Darwin only sexier was playing in the background as I touched myself like I was on fire. So there’s more than mixing involved. Oh and I love his preference to have a girl who won’t “freak if by chance they saw anything.” Yeah, because what are the chances that I would see your dick while you are MAKING A MOLD OF YOUR DICK.
But whatever – you don’t have to do anything “nausty” (except, you know, maybe penetrate him with the finished product) and there’s probably some free Long John Silver’s in it for you.
So…ladies?
The other day, I was at Red Robin for what was at least the fifth time this month because I can’t just kill myself in one afternoon like everyone else, I have to do it as slowly and with as much ranch dressing as possible. While trying to pretend my turkey burger was something more than a feeble attempt to offer the illusion that I’m health conscious as long as there’s cheese, I was told that I should start writing about gender misconceptions but…in a way that’s funny.
I chewed on it, but couldn’t get excited about it. Mostly because repeating patriarchy over and over again or spelling ‘woman’ with a ‘y’ is never funny or even remotely enlightening. The last time I boarded that ship, I tried convincing my ex’s best friend that women are equal to men, but the response I got was something along the lines of, “Yeah, but that doesn’t apply in the real world.” I shrugged it off, because since this was coming from someone in their fourth year of community college, their concept of the real world was not one I was concerned with. But then I started thinking about what I could get excited about, and that, of course, is uncircumcised cock.
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