Month: February 2008

We suffered a major software crash over here. It might have something to do with me, but I’ll never fess up to that entirely. It resulted in this:

Then this:

While you all waited here:

The prognosis is good. The worst is behind us. Still waiting for the bill.

Well, I’m sort of pissed off at you guys. Yes, all of you.

If you are going to do something, for everyone’s sake, do it right.

Exactly ten years ago, I started waxing what was then, a closely cropped bush. When I learned of a place that actually, gasp, did the elusive Brazilian, I ran off in search of the eternal four weeks of hair free bliss. Back then, there were very few places who did this. Maybe a handful in the country. I was well before the trend on living life pube-free.

The first time I went for a Brazilian, she tried to leave a “Landing Strip.” Oh, hells no Kotobuki, you’re taking all that hair off and you’re taking it off now. She protested, I gave her $20 and she finally saw fit to wax it all. There’s nothing like throwing money at a Vietnamese nail tech to help her change her mind. (Sorry, was that insensitive? Well, suck it! I’m telling a story!) It took several years for this trend to come full swing and it was clearly MY bitching at various salons up and down the eastern seaboard helped push this trend along. You’re welcome.

Now. I’ve noticed something that disturbs me quite a bit. I think that right now it is just a west coast trend. But I’m seeing it everywhere. Avert your eyes if you scare easily.

What is this? A backlash to the Brazilian? Let’s take a closer, grainier look.

All right. I have a few questions. When a guy with a landing strip is eating out a girl with a landing strip, what happens? Are there sparks? Is it like rubbing two sticks together? Will there be a fire? Can I rub my hands in front of it because it’s cold outside!! Wait, I got a little carried away with that last one.

This is the part where I explain why I’m mad at you all. CUBE and I started working on salons country-wide over ten years ago to make sure you all could one day enjoy the Brazilian Bikini Wax. And yes, I mean “you all.” A Brazilian is just as much for the girls as it is for the guys. So our work was done and she went on a trip and I took a tiny break to have a little sex and look for a new job and we left you all to watch the store. And what did you do? Most of you fell asleep and at least two of you were smoking pot in the back alley cause I can still smell it, (!!) and now this landing strip for men is suddenly spreading like the wave from L.A. to the east coast.

Put your foot down people. Make it stop at the Mississippi. Do not allow it to penetrate our turf! (Heh. I said “penetrate.”) By my calculations, I66 is the furthest west, so we need you to saddle up boy. Patsy is on the other side of the Mississippi but Texas and trends don’t go in the same sentence, much less the same state, so while my money would be on her to stop this shit, she won’t have a chance to intercept it. Fight the guy’s landing strip. Fight it.

Thank you. That is all.

*For more examples of “male landing strips,” please watch The Millionaire Matchmaker and check out, oh, any of her clients.

Some simple math to start things off.

1 Lorazepam + 1 Klonopin + 1 joint = I’m so sorry I blacked out at your bachelorette party and I don’t remember a fucking thing. No, I don’t remember that either.

1 set of car keys + 3 Texas sized “medium” beers = We stole some chick’s car for a joyride.

1 returned, joyridden vehicle, reparked across the street + 1 bag of Chex Mix + a Big Gulp + Patsy = Damn fine entertainment.

You will need to recall “order of operations” for this next one.

1 “almost” three year old blog whose writer prefers the rating XXX + (1 friend – any morals whatsoever) + increased searches for said friend both on google and in the Velvet search box = A Brand New Weekly Column from Sixes and Sevens!

Ladies and Gentlemen, children of all ages, you will come cum to love Tuesdays. Sixes and Sevens, formerly known as BIGGER BITCH THAN YOU, is going to begin her column here, called C U Next Tuesday! We’re very excited about this new column here at the Velvet in Dupont Headquarters. (Site of HQ: My bed.) We ran this by our Board of Directors (that’s really just me) and they gave it the okay. Then we finalized the details with our marketing department (also just me) and they felt this was the way to address our nationwide focus group findings: MORE SMUT. Finally, we consulted the Finance Department (also me.) They felt that with the recent dip in the economy they could not budget any additional funds for this endeavor. Then we all laughed hysterically since everyone knows Sixes and Sevens puts her sex life on display for free.

Exxxcellent Smithers.

I always hated having friends over in high school. My parents really commandeered the living areas of our house and didn’t yield to my friends and our headbanger aqua-netted hair. I longed for the day I would have a place of my own.

I went from my parents house to living with a cracked out roommate, to living with a boyfriend until I was 30 to being on my oh my fucking god Jenna Jameson is on Celebrity Apprentice right now looking like a skanky meth addict. Fuck. Hold on.

Okay. I’m back. Anyway, when I was finally living alone, I carefully planned out a design theme, then spent years and thousands debating the purchase and ultimate placement of each piece of furniture. I mixed vintage Heywood Wakefield with modern stuff from Scan and Pier 1 and oh my fucking god Trace Adkins is in danger of being fired off Celebrity Apprentice and I want him to win! Hold on.

Phew. He’s safe.

Shit. Where was I? Right. My prized mid-50’s Heywood Wakefield coffee table and ballerina lamp.

Anyway, the point of this is to tell you that even though I don’t live with another human, the dogs have fucking taken over. I want my place how I want it and I can’t because these little assholes are so demanding. First, it started with just having to keep the couch and chair covered with a sheet because they like to lounge there during the day. Then I had to cover my down comforter with a stupid sheet too. Then I realized that my beautiful bamboo floors were not safe for aging doggies, so I bought two area rugs and covered most of my living room. I had to move all the furniture out of the way and my living room has become a freaking wrestling ring. Sammy’s perennial base of operations has been that orange rug. I don’t get it.

In this corner, weighing in at 44 pounds is Thora the Princess of Dupont. And in this corner, weighing in at 37 pounds is Sammy the Stray Dog of Georgia!!!

One night last week I folded a magazine to something I wanted to read, put it on my bed and I come back to see this:

Mommy! The Radar Magazine Fashion issue is to die for!

And God forbid I try to cook anything or put anything edible on the kitchen counter.

Get it Sammy! Jump on those counters. I’m Sweet Thora, I would never do anything bad.

My beautiful 50’s mod stuff is now awash in dog hair, slobber, paw prints and marrow bone juice. Yeah. Somewhere in the last few months, I just gave up. It used to be important to me to have nice furniture. But I made my list of priorities and the dogs ranked higher. It’s more important to me that they are happy and healthy and comfortable as they age. Besides, it isn’t worth the fight. There’s two of them. There’s only one of me.

And after that award winning blowjob I administered the other night, I’m fucking tired.

An exciting change in the Velvet format, coming next week. Prepare your I.T. departments. I plan this will get me blocked from all your workplaces from one end of the beltway to the other.

Happy Weekend! Velvet outtttt.

Ugh. I have no idea why my brain is suddenly and consistently on childhood-rewind, but anyway.

I keep thinking about this drink my brothers and I used to be obsessed with in the 70’s. It was a milk / Yoo Hoo drink that came in a can. It was in the refrigerater section where you would buy regular milk and cheese. You shook the can and it was this thick like pudding milkshake. I called my brother to ask him if he remembered the name of the drink and all of a sudden, we’re back in the 70’s, watching Charlies Angels and drinking orange juice that came out of the freezer and was, yes, “concentrated” – hence the “not from concentrate” disclaimer on OJ now. I think they can stop with the “not from concentrate.” No one even knows or cares what that means anymore.

In my search for this drink, I stumbled across the following.

Enjoy the biggest timewaster ever.

Click “Tick Tock Toys.” I’m obsessed with the retro food packaging section.

And if anyone remembers that milk drink, can you tell me? I think it starts with an “F.” If I-66 was in his 30’s, my money would be on him. I think Cube and possibly Hammer are going to be my best bets. Help me! It’s driving me crazy!!!

Well well well. I’m so happy to hear some of you actually used my first round of wisdom in your interviews. Well done. But, there’s more.

6) Whose Attitude is Worse? Bitchy Blogger or Soon-To-Be Supervisor?
I’m a cut to the chase kind of girl. Most people are more politically correct than I am. When someone’s snark and ‘tude matches mine, awesome. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s very good for business, and exceptionally good for MY business, but I digress. When someone turns the corner from snarky to downright evil, then spank my ass and call me concerned. Okay, don’t call me concerned, but jesus, cut a girl some love and do the spanking anyway, please?

It doesn’t matter what someone else has in their backyard: It has no effect on my backyard. This is very important for people to realize. Keeping up with the Joneses is a fallacy. This rule applies to many types of situations. If I get wind of a writing contest, I forward it to other bloggers even though I may intend on entering myself. Know why? Because whether they win or not has zero effect on how good of a writer I may or may not be. How many houses one builder is selling has zero impact on how good another builder is at building and selling houses. Everyone has core competencies, and if they are all the same, then what the fuck is the point of a free market economy? We could all just become communists if we wanted to be the same.

The Duck Hunter, who you met in installment one, said he was “relishing the housing downturn because now all the people who wouldn’t talk to him before are now running to him for his commercial real estate business,” I thought, “Bittttter.” Then I thought, “Run!” It doesn’t matter what is going on with other people’s businesses. It doesn’t. Put your head down and do your best. Unless they are unethically stealing your customers or best practices, don’t worry. And even then…jesus. Do something about it instead of crying like a little bitch.

Lesson: If you can smell emotions are running a business, do some running of your own. As in, “Do not pass go, do not collect $200, just run.”

7) Did You Just…Did I Hear My Own…What the Hell Did You Say?
I have a gem. It’s the “thing” I like to say in an interview and it’s pretty clever but really applicable to my experience and industry only. You should have a gem, something to say that’s a thinly veiled disguise for how much of a team player you are or that you will suck anyone’s cock for the right price. Wait, maybe not that last one. So you drop this gem in a first interview and you are met with smiles and clapping hands and, “Amen sister!” (No no, they really said that.) You think, “Great. I done good, ma!”

So then you go to the second interview. They ask the same question, but then before you can relaunch your “gem” answer, they repeat, almost verbatim, except for adding the part in front “Well I personally always believed,” then trot off with your original answer word for word for word. Hello? What? What did you just say? You burgled my idea. And now you are passing it off as your own! And you didn’t give me credit! THIEF! This one was easy. Cheri O’Teri as Judge Judy just said NEXT!

Lesson: If they steal your implants they’ll never give you credit for being the one who came up with the D-chest idea in the first place. Oh come on. Not all the lessons can be so literal.

8) Come Here Often?
You have to listen to people. You really do. There is no amount of research or ass kissing that you can do to learn more than what you will by what people tell you. I had two interviews with the company who burgled my “gem” of an idea above. At the first interview, I liked the people and was gung ho for the second interview. But in the first interview, there was mention of a business plan rewrite based on some outside bullshit. Then at the second interview, there was mention again of the business plan rewrite based on other, different outside bullshit. What? WHAT? Do you bitches have any idea what you are doing? You keep rewriting your business plan every time you get a piece of information that is from some flunky artist-cum-pornstar-cum-researcher who declares May 4th, 2010 the day the real estate market rebounds? I am not opposed to a constant review of the roadmap for your business, shit, I have a roadmap for my own life and I try to operate with that in mind, but I don’t rewrite it every day based on what the UPS lady says or on what my 7th grade best friend posted on her Myspace page.

Do you know people who canvass for opinions? I do. I’m related to one. It is nothing short of infuriating. But working for one is really really bad.

Canvassing for opinions and acting on every single one means the boss will never get anything done. And if the boss never gets anything done, then I’ll never get anything done. And if I never get anything done, and I spend a year working for that boss, not getting anything done, WTF am I going to put after all those empty bullet marks on my resume with their shitty company name as the header? Christ.

Lesson: Companies do not rewrite business plans on a monthly, weekly or God Forbid, daily basis. If they do stupid things like this that violate everything you learned in kindergarden, consult your intuition and get out of there.

9) The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
I got a phone call from a national company with a headquarters out west somewhere. Several painful emails lacked any punctuation. (“hi my name is chris from x company and i wanted to know if you could do a phone interview with me tell me when would be a good time to talk then i’ll refer you to the local human resources contact he will call you to set up the in person interview also what is a good number to reach you on”) We did the phone interview. It went rather well and they scheduled me to go in to the local office to meet the person doing the hiring. Then I get an email that it’s on hold. Whatever. Then I get a phone call from the local office HR dude, who scheduled an in-person interview later that week. Then I got another phone call that it was changed to a phone interview because they wanted me to get through the screening process before I came on site. Sigh. Do you people have any idea what you are doing? As some crazy drunken Irish guy I used to work with would say, “The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Hey, is this someone’s beer or can I finish it?” Wait, scratch that part about the beer. Just the hands. That’s what I meant.

Lesson: If they are disorganized from the start, they will never be organized. This isn’t a good sign, only because it wasn’t just one blip in the process, it was hurdle after hurdle of stupidity.

10) Bend Over
I don’t get it. I really don’t. I know that interviewing and such has changed quite a bit over the years. I have heard that credit checks and background checks as well as “googling” are more common than ever, used to eliminate people out of the interviewing game. This is why I blog as “Velvet” and not as my real name, Persephone Eleni Athena Eros Pappadopolous.

Recently, I met with a recruiter who seemed wonderful, and very well may be, and has an interesting job on deck which she feels I would be perfectly suited for. (Don’t all recruiters think this? Yeah. Anyway.) So she emails me after the interview and says that I’ll have to fill out all these forms because this “big banker” won’t interview anyone without the paperwork. I look through it and discover they want to run credit and a background check. Now, despite how crazy my life has been, I have never been arrested and have impeccable credit. 811 baby. 811. So I don’t give a shit if people want to search my anal cavity for christsake, I have nothing to hide. But, I don’t like the idea that these people want to run all this info BEFORE they even lay their eyes on me. According to the recruiter, they don’t want to pursue a candidate only to find out that they don’t meet their qualifications. So I reluctantly agree, only because the job market is really unbelievably bad right now, and it’s been two weeks. I emailed the recruiter, and she can’t get in touch with anyone at said company. Uh. Hello? Isn’t that like, your job? So then I say, “This is why I did not feel comfortable giving you my okay to run all these these tests which I feel violate my privacy. There is obviously nothing in my background, so they have run the information for nothing, really.” She responded with something I read as “blah blah blah” and that was that.

Lesson: I don’t know. You guys tell me. My personal jury is still out on this one, I don’t know what to do. If you want a job, you might have to do things in this economy that you wouldn’t normally do in better times. This one is open for debate. I know that I’m pissed off about this, and won’t agree to do it again without an offer of employment or being very far along in the process. What do you all think though?

11) Where’s Waldo?
This is one of my favorites. I showed up for an interview and the person who was interviewing me decided not to come to work that day. And they never bothered to call me to tell me not to come. Then they had the nerve (via phone while laying in bed) to tell the receptionist to interview me and to send samples of my best work. Yeah, right lady. Like I’m going to send you a complicated and probably confidential budget I made and stole from my last job when you can’t even be bothered to get out of bed.

Lesson: Over your career you will amass a small (or large) portfolio of really good work. Don’t give it to people unless you are really far along in the game, like about to get a job offer. I hear this all the time – people have to do these mass presentations at the culmination of their interview process to tell the prospective company how to reorganize their business. Then they don’t hire the candidate, but guess whose ideas they use? It’s gray-area but legal, and very difficult to prove anyway unless you managed to patent some of your processes behind your idea. And I don’t recommend trying to work with the Patent Office on anything. They suck.

I hope that’s all I have. I’ve taken a temporary position that could amount to more, were it not in the ghetto. No, no, really, it is in the ghetto. I have five predecessors from the past two years, and all five of my predecessors were mugged at work. So we’ll see how it works out. I’m doing friends of mine in the industry a favor, and you know that all construction is now in unsavory neighborhoods. They understand that once I feel compromised, I’m quitting and they’ll have to put me somewhere else. It’s actually so bad, my mommy said she would pay me the same amount of money to stay home. It’s not a bad offer, really. Mommy doesn’t run credit checks. At least, not the last time I worked for the Mommy Corporation, which was from my day of birth to 18 years 22 years 24 years 30 years oh, hell. Who am I kidding? I am still an employee of the Mommy Corporation. Aren’t we all?

I went to visit that little troublemaker, Sixes and Sevens, in Pennsyltuckey this weekend. A pre-departure text I sent said, “What should I pack?”

Sixes and Sevens said we would be doing a lot of shopping, and one of the items on her list to buy was a couch.

Buying a couch for Sixes and Sevens is a difficult endeavor. You think you can just show up at the couch store and sit on a few, then make a decision? Hell no. When you buy things, you have to think about how they will be used so that you do the best job in choosing the item. Like, had I known my beautiful $1300 throwback-to-the-50’s couch would become home for all things dog, I never would have spent that much money on it. Anyway, at this point, Gazoo appeared over my head.

“She’s going to nail her men here, Velvet. The couch must be comfortable enough for that but not too comfortable because we don’t want the guy to fall asleep and God Forbid, stay over!”

“Thanks Gazoo. I also think the couch needs to repel fluids.”

“Well that goes without saying you dumb whore.”

God. When did Gazoo turn into such an asshole?

I packed my stuff, Thora and Sammy, Sixes and Seven’s wayward boxes from her old job, and the King of the Dogpark’s dog, Ted, into the car. Kidnapping Ted from his home did not go off without a hitch. This dog would not come willingly, so I had to forcibly remove him from his bed. By the time I got on the road, I was exhausted. “Beer!” I called ahead. “I need beer!”

To get to where Sixes and Sevens lives, you take the GW out to 495 to 270 where you have to try to have sex with your man on the way but he tells you he’s in a meeting jesus fucking christ, then you go to where 270 ends, then you take a bunch of dirt roads, cross into Pennsyltuckey, take some more dirt roads, drive by many “Land For Sale” properties that your now bankrupt ex-company once had under contract, then more dirt roads, then you find her, at the door of some big house, with a glass of wine and her dog Jukebox, waiting for his friends to arrive. I think one of the dogs sung, “Reunited and it feels so goooooood.”

We threw my stuff down and promptly went out.

I’m not sure why all their eyes are glowing as we bolted out the door and went off for a a night of debauchery.

We ate a very forgettable dinner at some place that looked like New Orleans threw up in there, then meandered around looking for an entertaining place to park our asses for the evening.

Sixes and Sevens: There’s this bar but it is in the ghetto, but I’ve wanted to try it.
Velvet: How ghetto?
Sixes and Sevens: Like, under an overpass and next to the train tracks, wrong side of town ghetto. We’ll need to drive there.
Velvet: And you want to go there because, why?
Sixes and Sevens: It looks fun. And I don’t want to go alone.
Velvet: Fiiiiine. (Trying to sound exasperated but really very intrigued.)

When we pulled up to the ghetto bar, the parking lot was PACKED. I thought that was reassuring, as if we were going to be killed, at least there would be a lot of witnesses.

We walked in and the place was mostly empty. I asked Sixes where all the people who drove all the cars outside were. She didn’t know either. As we sat at the bar and each ordered our Yuengling pints, I said, “This is weird. I feel like I’m in the beginning of a Forensic Files, like I can hear it now. ‘Two girls from out of town were last seen at the bar and no one knows why they ended up under the overpass, naked, dead, with big smiles on their faces.'”

I really need to stop watching Court TV. Then I had a few observations.

First, our bartender looked like a rode-hard Brianna Banks. Well, wait. Brianna Banks looks like a rode hard Brianna Banks, so I’m not sure what that means.

Second, everyone in Pennsyltuckey has this hairstyle. Sixes calls it “mom hair.”

Third, this sign. It was indeed, a Friday. And the only thing standing in the way between any old Friday and a disastrous Friday, was that sign. “Oh, Brianna? We’ll have the pitcher of Miller Lite please!” I would like to state for the record, that this would be the moment when everything went wrong.

While Brianna was pouring the pitcher, we asked her where all the people were. She told us they start to come in at 11 and the place gets packed. We were very excited, but it was still sadly just 8:00. We got started so early; we had some time to kill.

There I am, with my down feather and dog hair covered sweatshirt. When they say “dry clean only” on your down coat, they really mean it. I plugged in Sixes as the big winner on Tai-Play on Megatouch. I need a Megatouch for my house. Oh, wait. No I don’t.

Then, we noticed that they were definitely gearing up for a big night.

Around this point we ordered our second pitcher of Miller Lite. Sixes asked “I wonder why we don’t get a colostomy bag for ours like everyone else?” I guess because there was two of us, compared to all the single people who came in alone for their $5 pitchers.

Here come the cowboys. “Sissy! Get in that truck!”

I thought that this next shot would shape up to become my favorite picture of the evening. This was a common occurrence that night – much older ladies, I think they call them “cougars,” talking to men half their age. But I loved both her hair, and the cigarette dangling out of her mouth.

Note, I said, “thought” in the above statement. I thought it would be my favorite picture. Until, that is, this walked in.

Like Heidi Klum on Project Runway, I said, “What izzz dat?” I was unsure of the sex. Because I had seen it walk up to the bar, I was even more perplexed. Wait, here’s the full outfit.

The spandex dress reminds me of something I used to wear in college when I wanted to piss off my Kappa Kappa Slamma sisters. Man would they get mad. In their last Will and Testament, they left me an “appropriate black dress” for sorority functions. Cunts. It was Miami! In the 90’s! I’m from Connecticut! Do you know what people from the Connecticut coast stare at? Long Island! What the hell did you expect from me?

Back to Pennsyltuckey. The feast for our eyes continued.

Somewhere around here comes the third pitcher of Miller Lite.

Then this is where I got sloppy and forgot to knock off the flash. Sixes likes this picture for its yellow 1970’s quality. I like it because these three chicks didn’t catch me even after the flash went off, because you know they could easily beat my ass. Easily.

I know what you’re thinking. “Gee, you make fun of everything, don’t you Velvet?”

Yes. I. Do.

“D.C. 101 can you make it stop?”

“Yes I can! It’s the sound of Velvet’s luck running out!” Just as I mumbled under my breath that a guy across the bar was staring at us, just as Sixes and Sevens took a picture of him with her camera phone, just as she called him Mike Ditka to both me and via text to my “friend,” he got off his bar stool, walked over to us and said, “Okay, what are you girls taking pictures of over here?”

Damn! It was the time I forgot to knock off the flash! Idiotia! Now, you all know my partner in crime, Sixes and Sevens, right? She seems so tough and together, right. Well, she had that look on her face like when Snoop got caught by his wife for trying to eat chicken at the chicken place with David Beckham. Sixes is like, “uhhhh…uhhhh…I have to go to the bathroom!” She left me there with Mike Ditka, and I’m laughing so hard for being caught that there is literally nothing I can form into words. I wasn’t finished laughing by the time Sixes comes back.

Mike Ditka asked what we found so fascinating. I said, “I’ve been trying to figure a few things out all night. First, is that blonde thing a guy or a girl?” He didn’t know either. “Second, why is the bartender such a bluetooth tool? That looks ridiculous and I WILL get a picture of it before I leave.” Mike returned to his seat and I snapped my pic.

Dude. You’re working. You do realize you look like a major idiot right? Hey, there’s Mike Ditka in the back on the left, sitting in front of the self-serve beer case. Several seconds later, Sixes and Sevens appeared behind all that mess and took Mike’s hat, wore it for a bit, and then got his phone number, email, and told him to check this blog when he got home. What. The. Fuck. Is there one man who has crossed your path Sixes, who you have not given out MY information to? Hmm. Velvet in Dupont has become like a meeting place for all Sixes and Seven’s man-boys. Err. Man-toys. I meant to say man-toys.

So, when she said that she found this specimen “really fucking hot…”

…I had absolutely zero qualms about writing her phone number on a napkin, balling it up, and throwing it at his head. Too bad it missed, and her number ended up on the floor of the ghetto bar. Too bad he was dumb as the day is long. That was a painful conversation, however brief it was.

Now, I don’t want to hear any shit about the next part. None at all. We left. We got in Sixes little truck and we attempted to exit the parking lot and drive the 10 blocks or so home. But then we hit black ice and there was some serious fishtailing and then she righted that thing up and we were on our way. Black ice is not your friend after three pitches of ML. Just saying. And I do want to point out that the woman who grew up in Georgia and spent most of her adult years in L.A. can “drive truck” on black ice after three pitchers better than most sober people I know when it’s 80 degrees out and sunny.

Okay, that was only Friday but I’m exhausted.

And because several dozen people have searched for “sixes and sevens” in my search box, and she’s become such a popular little hussy, you can now reach her at her brand spanking new email address:

SixesandSevensATvelvetindupont.com

It’s all about my friends this week.

If you haven’t heard, one of my dearest friends has hung up the blogging hat. If you don’t know FreckledK, then I’ll tell you who she is.

She’s the woman who will walk up to the head to toe tattooed tough girl at a gritty bar and say, “Did you just say something mean about my friend?”

She’s the woman who will fly out to Phoenix Arizona to get you drunk because you drove 2800 miles to escape a relationship that crashed, burned, imploded and then slapped you in the face, with dirt.

She’s the woman who, on hearing your plight, will put her phone down on her desk and enlist all her co-workers in an immediate campaign. She’ll even drive the Save Ferris blimp.

She’s the woman who will point out, despite your best efforts to believe the contrary, that you are, in fact, in love again.

K’s post and farewell stands up for what she feels has become a widely accepted practice in blogging: “Oh, it wasn’t me who wrote those racist, misogynistic, hateful, comments. It was my ‘persona.’ My alter ego. It wasn’t me at all.”

It’s sort of like little boys who break something then turn around and say to mom, “I didn’t do it.”

Right. Little boys.

Women are more insecure beings by nature. Can you blame us? We’ve been thought of as the “lesser sex” for more years than anyone can count. In theory, we’re equal. In practice, we’re not. And we probably never will be.

Every time I take a new job, I know I will be confronted with a whole host of new people, some of whom will air their obvious hate for my gender with very little disguise. Men I have worked with have told me the following:

“If you don’t move out of my way, I’ll rip that dress off you.”

“Why don’t you come over here and sit on my face.”

“A woman should never make that much money.” (The person he said it to came and told me.)

“I know why you have this job. If you think I was born yesterday, you’re wrong.” (In case you didn’t get that one, he implied I was sleeping with the boss. I wasn’t.)

If I believed everything those unsavory characters in the Construction and Land Development world dealt me, I could become a really insecure person. I refuse to define myself by what some others choose to.

I know that many women bloggers have discussed the non-stop slams we take, not only for our gender, but for our age, for being too flabby, for being cougars, for not being Russian, for whatever the fuck it is that we’ve done wrong now. The list consistently grows. Why? Because much like the Real World and all other reality shows – drama sells. The tiff from last season morphs to a slap this season which morphs to rehab next season which morphs to murder the following season. The controversy must always be topped.

The problem with blogs though, is that they are not a TV show. They are the ideas of individuals. In some cases, it is a few misguided individuals, persona or not, who like to yank chains and pick the zit of women’s insecurities. What kind of person shows up at happy hours, witnesses that the average size (and National Average) of women bloggers is a 10, not a 2, and then goes home to pen yet, another yawningly dull “any girl over a size 2 is fat” post? What kind of person shows up at happy hours, assesses that a good majority of women bloggers are around 30 then goes home to pen yet another achingly trite “women over 30 are losers who just want to get married and can’t because they are such colossal losers who could never get a guy like me.”

The kind of person whose blog I would never read. And you shouldn’t either. You can slam them back with insults to defend our gender or you can stop reading and stop commenting. If there is no audience, the show goes dark. How many more hateful posts do you think they’ll churn out if several posts in a row remain with zero comments. Zero zero zero. Give them the number of comments they think our dress size should be. Zero.

And if you don’t want to stop reading for that reason, stop reading for this one: Some people are just too stupid to deserve their First Amendment Rights.

Smoochies, FreckledK. The standard you set for blogging, but more importantly, for friendship is one we should all hope to achieve.