I Grossed Myself Out Today

KGO topic: the clap. There is a marked increase in cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis in the United States, and Gil asked the fundamental question: why are we wasting money on abstinence-only education? Federal money is actually preventing children from getting accurate safe sex and birth control information. Federal money goes to programs that hope-to-God teenagers don’t figure out how their bodies lock together. Federal money is NOT preventing junior high girls from having oral sex in record numbers. And as a feminist aside, someone needs to tell these little boys the meaning of the word reciprocation. You see where I’m at on this subject. So I needed to book a guest who was all about the “purity” and waging war on popular society and its slutty, slutty ways.

It happens rarely, but sometimes I have to call an organization that runs counter to everything I’ve ever believed in. I booked that crazy family member from the Fred-Phelps-Church-of-Abhorrent-Behavior not long ago; I had to be nice to John Bolton when I talked to him; and today, I booked Leslee Unruh. She is the head of an abstinence clearinghouse, as well as a true-believer in the anti-choice movement. Planned Parenthood practically has a dossier on her. I’m inherently mistrustful of females in the business of legislating other women’s bodies. Men who do it are just ignorant idiots, but women who do it are missing a piece of their soul. The fact that this woman is also a homophobe is just icing on the bile-cake. But I needed her to talk to Gil about her side, the foreign side, the side I will never ever get. And she did a good job, objectively speaking. But it disturbed me on a profound level that I had to be conciliatory to someone like that. That I had to use my phone voice and that I had to waste my effervescent wit on her. Those were jokes I’ll never get back!

But people like her need to exist in order to provide me with contrast. Without that side’s promotion of shame and restriction and close-mindedness, I have no context. No one to be the wrong to my right. No one to inspire me to arm myself with the knowledge I need to be an able foe to my ideological nemeses.

Wow. I’m like Buffy The Ignorance Slayer.

Originally written 11.07

Funny-looking and Hot NOT Mutually Exclusive

I have often been accused of being boy or girl crazy because of my ability to find beauty and sexiness in a lot of different people. Beauty is such a nebulous concept that it has to evolve and change and hinge on things other than facial symmetry or huge ta-tas, though, and I consider my tastes to be varied as opposed to indiscriminate. A woman can be less-than-thin, or have a strange nose, or a funny mole, and yet command a room when she walks in simply due to the power of her voice and carriage. A man can have sunken cheeks or flinty eyes or a prominent forehead and easily be the best choice for a hay-rolling you've ever met.

Men like Willem Dafoe, Robert Knepper from Prison Break (and the new season of Heroes, woo-hoo!) and sci-fi/fantasy staple Jeff Kober all have that dirty-sexy thing going on: they're rough around the edges, yes, but there's something going on with the voice, or the mannerisms that makes them incredibly hot to me. Most of the time it's a look in the eyes, like they could rip your clothes off before you even notice their hands are moving. And then when your clothes are off they make you their slave. Women have this going on too--Tilda Swinton is a perfect example of someone who straddles the line of androgyny in a way that intrigues me and makes me think she was born to seduce people. Maybe not people, maybe just me.

For clarification, Amy Winehouse is NOT the right kind of unattractive for our purposes--she's just too sad. Courtney Love--too sad. Sandra Bernhard--she's right up there with the best of the turn-the-lights-off-then-get-naked types of people. Mickey Rourke? Verdict's still out.

Originally written 4.09