Jennifer Crusie | Argh Ink | Blog

Joss will be bringing you Doogie vs. Mal in a series of computer shorts or “webisodes” (horrible word). Whedon describes the series as “It’s the story of a low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to,” as reported on Ain’t It Cool News. Here’s the teaser:

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

I love the net. And Joss. And Doogie and Mal.

Through Salon’s Broadsheet, originally from Copyranter, I found two French safe sex ads, one for women and one for men, that I keep going back to because they’re pretty and thought-provoking, like a starlet working a good cause. (They’re Not Safe for Work, so I’ll put them after the jump.)

First, they’re beautiful in a children’s-book-illustration kind of way, very dreamy and fun with overtones of danger, but they’re definitely R-rated. The juxtaposition of the style and the NSF content make for look-again pictures, so that’s a good ad.

Then the crowded details make you stay there once you get there (as in “how many breasts can you find in the picture?”), especially the play-on-images-instead-of-words (or as Catherine Price of Broadsheet put it, “I will never look at a sea turtle the same way again”). I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a cow butt in the man’s illustration. And if you ask me, there are way too many penises in the woman’s ad and not nearly enough tongues, although she still looks delighted. Well, it’s a phallocentric world we live in. Another puzzler: there’s only one face in these illustrations besides those of the two protagonists, and it’s in the man’s illustration. Why? I’m not complaining, I’m just wondering.

Third, they’re very narrative in that the central characters are moving through a landscape, clearly active, over the tag, “Explore. Just Protect Yourself.” That’s goal and conflict, just begging you to look at the picture and tell yourself a story. Not too many safe sex ads work as erotica, too, so that keeps you looking.

Fourth, I’m still trying to figure out why the woman is deep sea diving and the man is traveling through space. For awhile, I tried to tie it to sex, but I think it’s more that men go out and conquer new worlds (thrusting through the cosmos maybe) and women explore their deeper emotions. Maybe. Or maybe it’s just there were more phallic symbols underwater and more vaginal symbols in space. Nah, there’s a subtext there, I just haven’t puzzled it out yet.

Then there’s the obvious: these couldn’t be published here without screaming, tearing of clothes (non-sexual) and demands for censorship. These illustrations show sex to be a great adventure, something fun and fascinating and interesting which I think makes them powerful. Just as we’ve gotten so used to our government lying to us that we don’t trust anything they say anymore (FISA, anybody?), I think our Reefer-Madness approach to sex education has created a credibility gap that we can’t afford. These ads don’t say “sex is bad, don’t do it,” which half of all teens will ignore anyway even in the face of the ridiculously ineffective and expensive abstinence programs we’ve thrown at them, they say “yes, sex is a whole new world to explore, but you don’t know what’s lurking in all the excitement, so be careful out there.” Which is so smart. And possibly even effective. That’s the kicker, I don’t know how effective they’d be. But they do tie condoms to excitement and exploration so maybe they shift perception and make condoms cool.

But the thing that really got me is that, to my eye, the picture of the woman’s adventure is shockingly explicit whereas the picture of the man’s exploration could be an illustration in Psychology Today. That tells me how we’ve shrouded men’s naked bodies while we’ve used naked women to sell damn near everything. I know, I know, that’s been obvious in movies for decades, but I consider myself pretty open-minded, and I looked at the woman’s illustration and thought, “Whoa,” and at the man’s illustration and thought, “Ordinary stuff.” I’ve decided I’m all for it. Anything that demystifies the penis is good for our phallocentric culture. Or as the protagonist of The Bell Jar wrote, when her boyfriend exposed himself to her, all she could think of was a turkey neck and giblets. Or an octopus with a bad thyroid.

Or maybe they’re just an R-rated picture game. How many breasts can you find in outer space?

And watch out for those sea turtles.

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Cleaning out the spam folder and trying to check for legit comments, I noticed that the new thing in spam is looooooong lists of phrases that start to look like free verse (this is the R version instead of the original X):

sophie moone cowgirl
crossdressing king of prussia
men forced to be sissies
dating online parent service single
doug’s refinishing supplies climax michigan
cowboy cowgirls southwestern
condoms drink drinkers free heavy provokes
salon tres chic in agawam ma
daddy cool remix
man pantie sissy lace
wexford ribs joe daddy
celebrities emergency housing alternatives

It’s like e. e. cummings. Only, you know, not.

I finally got my bed together. Four days, a zillion pieces unless you count the screws and nails and the allen wrench and then it’s two zillion pieces. I wrestled the box spring on it, then the mattress, then looked at it and thought, “Huh.” Clearly, you’re not supposed to use a box spring on this bedframe. Top of the world, Ma. Regardless, I’m keeping it this way. If you never hear from me again, I rolled off the bed and killed myself.

I have two little girls coming to stay with me week after next, so I looked for bubble stuff at Krogers because I wanted to blow bubbles and if there are kids here, I have an excuse to do it. Except in the twenty-five years since Mollie blew bubbles with me, there have been HUGE advances in bubble technology. I got six different kinds of bubble makers. Two had batteries. I am going to have such a good time. I may even let the kids play with them.

The Curse of the Sub Zero is over. When I moved in here, there was a Sub Zero fridge from the eighties. It clearly had no respect for me; while it kept my food decently cold, it sometimes froze my carrots and warmed my Diet Coke, and often it refused to open. If I was desperate, I’d yank hard a couple of times, swear, and then really yank and it would give up, but there were times I decided I just wasn’t that hungry and walked away. When Bob was here, he tried to open it and said, “Is this locked?” I said, “No, it’s cranky.” He yanked on it again and the fridge gave up, but he said, “Get a new one.” Well, I’d been trying. I’d done all my homework and zeroed in on the one I wanted, Energy Star, the whole thing. Then I took a deep breath and went out to buy The Major Appliance. Except the Energy Star ratings just got tougher so KitchenAid was retooling the one I wanted and all the old models were gone and the new models wouldn’t be in until the end of July. Sears toyed with me by letting me order it and then canceling the order (I’m annoyed with Sears), but Lowes had a Whirlpool floor model that the salesman swore was the same fridge, and he sold it to me for 10% off. So last week they brought in the new one and took the old one. It didn’t go easy. Damn thing must have weighed a thousand pounds. But now I have fabulous working refrigerator in my new unfinished kitchen that lets me open the doors. It’s such a rush. I don’t know where the Sub Zero is. Probably lurking in the woods, plotting its revenge. (I’ve been watching a lot of Supernatural. Sorry.)

Speaking of Bob, when he was here the last time he took a walk down by the river. Here’s the picture I took of him from the deck. Yes, that’s my back yard. But where’s Waldo? I mean, Bob.

Why, yes, Mollie did figure out how to do an end run around Wordpress’s really horrible update. That’s how Callie’s one-day old picture got up here. Which reminds me, here she is at five days:

And now I have to stop doing the proud grandmother thing on the internet. But thank you, Photobucket for finally being the solution to the picture problem.

The Fabulous Krogers near here has full size pink tools—shovel, rake, and hoe—that I snickered at. Well, there was a sign that said, “Pink hoe.” I couldn’t help myself. Except now I want them but if I go back, they’ll be gone. Also I’m broke (see below). But a pink hoe . . . I think I need a pink hoe. Speaking of snickering, Krogers also had a sign for the NEW Snickers Bars! Naturally, I looked to see what was new. Snickers with . . . caffeine. WTF? Of course, they’d be nirvana for Bob, but still . . . caffeine? The sugar rush isn’t enough? Or is the caffeine supposed to carry you through the sugar crash that follows? I’m perplexed.

I’m having a hell of time getting any writing done what with all the workmen and the new grandkid and cleaning out the house to stock a Goodwill, so this looks like a good solution. Sweaty, but good. Focus, that’s what I need.

It’s from the fabulous “You Knit What?” blog. And it’s not the worst thing there, either.

Lani e-mailed and said she’d bring a pool for the girls to play in and I thought, “Who brings a pool from New York?” so I went to Toys ‘R’ Us which they should rename Crack F’r Grandmas. I almost bought a tiny toddler-sized frog wading pool for Callie. Then I remembered she wouldn’t be a toddler for a year. So I concentrated on the girls and got a sprinkler set and an alligator pool and a spray thing that’s a zebra’s head and when you press the button, the zebra’s mouth opens and the water sprays out. I would have had to buy that one whether the girls were coming or not. But it turned out the spray is pretty limp. It’s a toddler spray gun. I suppose the zebra was the tip-off there . . .

Vanity Fair just compiled this excellent guide to good blogs, which I found because my fave blog, Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo, mentioned it. I clicked on Idontlikeyouinthatway.com and found this outraged observation about Naomi Campbell’s ridiculously light sentence for assaulting two cops and an airline attendant:

“Here’s the thing. I dare you to get on an airplane right now and act like such a lunatic that the police are called, and when they come, you attack them and have to be physically restrained and thrown out. Not only will you get a taser tan and locked up underneath a prison, but your girlfriend will be sold to a Mexican gang, your dog will be set on fire, and your parents will be turned into Nazi werewolves. If you’re lucky, they won’t build a moat around your kid’s daycare and give his scent to a dragon.”

Now that’s good blog.

My kitchen is coming right along, but the TV was too low for the cabinets, so we took it down and moved the bracket up, and then when we hooked it up, it wouldn’t work. We tried everything. I know it’s not broken, I think it’s just sulking, but I learned my lesson with the SubZero. Once an appliance turns on you, there’s nothing but bad times ahead. So I went out and bought a new TV. Damn good thing I’m not traveling this year because I couldn’t freaking afford it now; my credit card visibly trembled when I swiped it at Best Buy. But I’ll have TV for the house party week after next. I’m having the kind of guests who would get nasty if there was no TV to play movies on. Come to think of it, they’d get nasty if they couldn’t get into the fridge, too. Plus I think Bob is coming back in August, and the thought of him here without TV and with a stubborn fridge . . . no, it’s too awful. It was a necessary purchase. And now I’ll go have my dinner which will be generic peanut butter and stale crackers.

This wasn’t much of a random Sunday. More of a catch-up Sunday. I’m just giddy because I can post pictures and I have a TV that works and a fridge that opens. Simple pleasures are best. And expensive.

Did I mention that I’m a grandmother?

Maybe it’s because I’m newly a grandmother that I get all weepy now, or maybe it’s because it’s just so beautiful that Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon can finally get married after fifty-one years together, but I’m all teary over the first same-sex marriage in California this week. Go here to read about it and see the pictures or just google for Del and Phyllis and you’ll find them. They’ve been trailblazers for fifty years, and married in all but law for longer than that, and now they’re legally wed. Voters in California might take it away from them in November, but I have faith in California.

Beautiful babies and beautiful weddings all in the same week. Feels like things are finally moving in the right direction.

Here’s Callie’s birth announcement picture:

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