Archive for September, 2008
Gender discrimination
The men in my life would like me to share this observation, I think so they can say “I told you so” to the women in their lives.
Fucking girls is harder than fucking boys.
I hesitate to suggest that my sample size is powered to show significance, but anecdotally the claim “x action produces y result” is true for more men than it is women.
And it’s not just women as a group who are less consistent – x action can even produce different results, at different times, in the same woman.
So if you care about being a good shag (most of us do) you have to be more flexible and adaptive in bed with a girl than you do with a boy.
Couple that with the fact that the penis/strap-on wielder generally takes on the lion’s share of the thrusting, and I’m forced to conclude that when it comes to satisfying a lover, women do have it a bit easier than men.
Take that, Pankhurst.
Second honeymoon
I’m off to Paris for a second honeymoon (read: dirty weekend), just two months after coming back from the first.
J and I got quite a bit of cash as wedding gifts, because it’s traditional in Spain to give the bride an envelope of money rather than a toaster or gravy boat (my mother was informed that it would be very rude indeed were I to refuse the envelopes, and I hate being rude).
So we had all this money, in Euros, and were wondering what to do with it. We definitely didn’t want more stuff – we already have seven years of stuff we’re trying to get rid of.
On top of that, I tend to believe that crazy experiences are worth more than most three-dimensional things – they don’t break or devalue, for a start, and happy memories are always going to make you smile.
So, what did we want to experience? Easy.
Fine dining! Fancy living! MICHELIN STARS (plural)!
So tonight, I am going to be eating here,
Le Pre Catelan
sleeping here,
Hotel du Petit Moulin
and wearing these (NSFW).
Ooh la la!
Therapy odyssey > thodyssey?
So I’m four weeks in an kinda fascinated by the process, but possibly the sort of fascination you’d also have watching a hooded cobra hypnotise its prey.
I’ve written various notes and scribbles about the sessions as they’ve been and gone, but that’s old news now. Here are the topline data:
Wk 1: Bad. Left me feeling upset and vulnerable.
Wk 2: Good. Gave me some useful ideas about how J and I relate to each other when we fight.
Wk 3. Bad then good. Edgy and awkward, but I realised something amazing just after I left.
Wk 4. Good-ish…
But this week’s therapy degenerated into talking about how therapy makes me awkward and uncomfortable. (Aside – I tore my left adductor some years ago and went to see an osteopath.
Me: It hurts when I do this. Him: I suggest you stop doing that then; best £35 I’ve ever spent.*)
Anyway, back to the therapy. I said that I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep coming, she said we could talk more about that feeling next week. Hmmm… I wonder how many dodgy therapists use their understanding of the human condition to keep unassertive people on their books for years?
I’ve definitely got some good stuff from the process, but each hour I spend there is like having teeth pulled without anaesthetic. Difficult to tell right now what the cost/benefit ratio is, although I suspect the credit crunch might decide for me quite soon.
*It wasn’t actually the best £35 I’ve spent until he’d stripped me to my underwear and done painful things to me.
Sunday afternoon in the pub
To roughly quote a friend, 300 certainly wasn’t genre-defining in terms of comic book movies, but its production processes were pretty pioneering (alliteration, the English disease).
The main thing this makes me think of is CGI porn. Just imagine what fantastic 300-esque stuff the porn industry could create if it were prepared to flash a bit of cash (and knew how to spend it, The Fashionistas is shot on 35mm with an expensive soundtrack and still manages to be the dullest fetish flick I’ve seen).
I’m already picturing fairies, dragons, space monsters, ooh, zero-gravity (and tentacles, natch), and that’s just for my debut movie. Plus there are endless possible settings and backdrdops, costumes and so on.
CGI also opens up the possibility of exploring realms that are illegal with real performers – bestiality, paedophilia, necrophilia – which raises a whole slew of interesting moral questions.
Would watching a digitally-rendered kid-flick make someone more likely to search out kids IRL, or fuel the production of real paedophilia movies? Although once CGI is noticeably faster and cheaper than live action the second part of the question would probably become academic, and I’m yet to meet anyone who plays GTA who’s killed a call girl.
Watchable CGI porn is clearly still a long way off though. A quick web search (I’m so gonna get sacked!) reveals that so far the genre has offered up terrible limb-flailing hentai (which takes the hand-drawn movies backwards if anything) and Priceless Films.
I think the guys at Priceless have the right idea, and their characters look good, but the animation is a long way from getting me (anyone?) hot.
Until the dawn of decent CGI porn, there is always Ice Age
Communication II
I find it hard to say “I feel x” (Actually, that’s not true, I find it easy for values of x that are physical, but hard for ones that are mental. Anyway…)
Once I’ve managed it, I feel like I deserve a cookie and a pat on the head. I’m still not prepared, after all this time, for a litany of reasons why x is invalid.
As an extension of this, I almost can’t see how arguing can fix problems in a relationship (I know, I know, that’s an absurd statement).
Is this because I feel like I can never win, or always have to win? Perhaps the problem is seeing it as a battle in the first place?
Since penning this stuff, J and I have had a long and quite useful chat (he didn’t shout, I didn’t cry and flounce out of the room) so I’m feeling a bit less impotent about talking.
Communication I
These thoughts are a few days old, I scribbled them onto a scrap of paper after meeting the new shrink
I’m not quite sure how to communicate anymore. Saying nothing doesn’t work – you have to leave a relationship as soon as you run into problems – but I don’t think saying everything is a viable alternative.
The trouble is, I have no idea how to navigate the no-man’s-land in between.
These days with J I often find I say something I consider to be honest but not accusatory and his response is that I’m being selfish or dismissive.
I don’t have the first idea how to understand this mis-match, but it clearly belies the communication confusion I’m feeling.
Cheese sammiches and sex 