Memo to the beasts

Eldest cat: Seeing the bottom of the bowl is not a giant tragedy. Also, stop hissing at everyone. It's getting embarrassing.

Middle cat: I understand that you are clawing my calf repeatedly because you want me to the throw the ball. But, as I have said repeatedly, I cannot THROW the ball unless I HAVE the ball. Fetch means you bring the ball back to me. It does not mean "bring the ball halfway back and then hassle me until I get up and go pick it up and throw it again." Whatever game THAT is, I'm not playing.

Youngest cat: I get that you need to be brushed ALL. THE. TIME. However, there are only 24 hours in the day and I do have other responsibilities. Don't worry, even with a mere 3.6 hours of brushing per day, your coat is lovely, sleek, and stripey.

Open Letter to Male Musicians:

We get it. You have a penis, and you would like to put it in someone. This is not brand new information, and you can stop writing songs about it.

Thanking you in advance,
Jezebella

Giftmas List

Dear Santa, enclosed please find my wish list for this year:

1. A day without rape.
2. A fifty-percent reduction in man-splaining (I'll take the rest next year, mmmkay?)
3. A better job
4. Free contraception for all, and abortions for anyone who wants one, on demand and without apology.

That should do it!
xo,
Jezebella

Dear Married Friends:

When you get married and stop calling your single friends, it's shitty. When you only invite other married people to dinner, to movies, to parties, it just sucks. What the fuck is wrong with you that you can no longer be friends with singletons? We're not contagious. We aren't a threat to your marriage. Go call one of your single friends today and invite her out to dinner, or to your holiday open house, or out for coffee. Or just, you know, fucking CALL her. Sheesh.

An Open Letter to Apartment Therapy Commenters:

You are a denizen of a website that regularly features $4000 coffee tables and $10,000 sofas. It fetishizes *original* Eames and Saarinen furniture and all things mid-century modern. The AT philosophy advocates saving up and investing in quality design for your home, your furnishings, and your decor, rather than buying whatever cheap crap from China fills up Walmart this week. And yet you accuse me of snobbery for advocating the purchase of art made by artists, and suggest that just anyone can make good "abstract art" with some paper and black ink. How does this compute? Abstract art, like good design, is a matter of connoisseurship. Anyone who reads AT often enough to comment regularly should be able to understand this. Why, I ask you, should someone who has carefully designed their entire living space give up on quality when it comes to the artwork on their walls? This is not snobbery any more than preferring an original Eames to a knockoff is snobbery.

Quality artwork at reasonable prices can be found at your local gallery, your local college art department, and online. "DIY"ing abstract art will result for 99% of DIYers in splashy shitty decorative crap that looks like something from a reality design show on HGTV, not something good enough to frame and hang in one's home.

Finally, if you can't tell the difference between Modernist abstraction and Asian calligraphy, you aren't looking very hard, and you have proven yourself a less-than-capable judge of artistic quality.

Hugs,
Jezebella, PhD

"what does a rapist look like?"

I wrote a post with that title over two years ago, and I still get a zillion hits coming from that search string. I find it depressing that so many people ask that question. Why? Because they don't look *any* way. They are all ages, weights, races, heights, incomes, eye colors, and manners of attire. Let me reframe it: if 1 in 6 women is raped or attempted-raped in her life, and most rapists assault an average of 10 women in his life, then 1 in 60 men that you know is a rapist.

One in sixty. Look at your facebook friends list, or around your workplace, your church, the bar you go to, and you'll probably see a rapist. He might not even *think* he's a rapist, because he thinks that pressuring a woman until she gives in, or raping a woman too intoxicated to give consent isn't "really" rape, but he is.

A rapist looks like your neighbors, your relatives, your acquaintances, your coworkers. I'm sorry to say it, but I speak as I find. You can't see them coming down the street. They don't wear crazy-rapist shirts or come with warning labels. I wish they did. I wish we could tattoo "rapist" across the goddamned forehead of every dickblister that rapes a woman, but unfortunately we cannot.

Do you want to know how to prevent rape? Get dudes to stop raping women. Here's a handy primer that all men should commit to memory:

I got yer rape prevention email forward here.

iiiiiii

I am tired of people who say "iPhone" instead of "phone". Do you REALLY need to let me know you have an iPhone? Can you not just say "phone" like the rest of us? I mean, it's not like I go, "Oh, hey, my Palm Treo 755p was ringing but it was in the bottom of my purse." "I got a new app for my Palm Treo 755p." It's just a fucking phone, yo. Cut it out. Seriously.