Sunday, December 28, 2008

This is Not about Sex

My corkscrew broke trying to open a bottle of mead last night. The metal bit is stuck in the cork now and I have no idea how to get it out. I always wonder if this kind of thing is a metaphor for my rotten love life. My aim always seems to be off when I toss something in a basket, too. Fortunately, I've yet to experience any trouble with gas pumps. Well, except that one time when Trisa and I were arguing about how much gas I'd let her buy for me and the pump came out and gasoline spilled all over the place.

Er, I know what you're thinking and, no, Trisa and I never slept together.

Before beginning comic work yesterday, I went to Target and bought a cheap tea kettle for the mead (it was awkward pouring it out of a pan before) and some moisturising hand lotion. My hands get astonishingly dry during the winter and normally I just wait for my mother or sister to look horrified at my cracked and bleeding fingers before giving me a bottle of lotion, but no-one noticed this year. I wasn't quite sure what kind I should get, and I couldn't help feeling somewhat awkward in the aisle looking them over. I assume everyone who sees a guy buying lotion by himself thinks he's going to use it to masturbate, which probably makes it a good thing the Bath and Body Works was closed when I went to the door.



I've been trying to figure out whether Amanda Palmer's "Blake Says" is a tribute to or a rebuke of The Velvet Underground's "Stephanie Says". Maybe it's both. It almost seems like it's about how, though Blake is critical of Stephanie's emotional remoteness, he secretly wants to end up either with her or become just as cold as she is. I get the sense that Palmer sees this situation as both pathetic and pitiable (er, those words mean almost the same thing, don't they? Let's read "pathetic" as containing a dose of derision from Amanda). Maybe the idea is that Blake focuses on aloof women to avoid confronting his own fear of intimacy.

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