Bitches, I'm ORDAINED

Sometimes, my friends do things, and I'm all like, "Um, have you MET me?"

An example, you say? Shortly after her wonderful vacation to the eastern shores of the U.S., in which she got delightfully engaged, Princess D called to ask me to be in her wedding.

As I saw where the phone call was heading, I immediately begin to cycle the following questions in my head "Whatever will the dress look like?" Which is when the shocker came, and rather than ask me to bridesmaid (which I would have been delighted to do, lots of photos with Princess D and K-Yo), Princess D asks me to officiate her wedding.

"You mean, like, officiate?" I said.

"Yes," she said. "You really have two options. You can get a temporary license in California, which requires some planning and you'd have to get here a couple of days earlier. Or you can go and get ordained somewhere."

And so, ladies and gentlemen, from here on in, please refer to me as Reverend Jocelyn Saurini.



I'm here, to meet your spiritual needs on a daily basis. Ceremonies can be arranged. I'm not joking. This is legal in all 50 states. Getting married? Christening a baby? I'm here! General spiritual guidance? I may ask you, "Have you MET me?", but I'm legally qualified to give it to you.

I'm sure Princess D is wondering what words of wisdom I'll be poetically preaching in September. I was leaning towards some Rumi, obviously. But then there was another passage I read by a South American author that I though I would build around. But then HWP (formerly Mrs. DCWP, but I decided she needed her own space) sent me the loveliest book, which may change that.

Prayer service commences this Sunday about an hour before the Ravens and Steelers kick off.

 

Sexes With My Exes: An Experiment in Art

So, firstly, I know that there is an impression out there that any time there is a "bad girl" idea, it has come from me. This is inaccurate. Sometimes, I am lame. Sometimes, I don't really want to go out. Sometimes, I just want to chill. For example, last time I was in Pennsylvania, Pookie and Honeydunce took Ferris and I to a "hipster rock and roll party." The party was thumping. The music was jumping. There were forties, and people were going to drink and get stupid until the AM. And I looked at Ferris and said, "Let's go home and play online scrabble and take pictures of the cats." So that's what we did. Sometimes, I can be lame.

I say this, because I am sure you would assume that the "Sexes With Exes" project at pottery night was my idea. It was not. NOT. It was Kim's idea. And the idea was that we would all make large, round serving platters that basically were pie charts of things that applied to our "sexes with exes." Yes, Paul Jack. I know that you must be very jealous right now that you and I did not at one time think of this.

At any rate, the idea, obviously, brilliant. And I thought I'd share the platters. Kim goes first!



So to review, Kim's list:
- Lamp breaking, sheet ripping sex (which is a phrase said Paul Jack and I used to use, which I am proud to have sent out into the world.
- What the hell was I thinking?
- Don't remember your name
- Took your virinity
- Misc. Locations
- One night stands
- Boom! I got your boyfriend (dirty)
- Walk of shame
- Cyber, virtual and phone (I'm personally surprised how big this section is in her chart)
- I wish I would have had sex with ...
- anal (I cannot believe your color choice for that! Gross!)
- Experimental
- Crazy in the head, crazy in the bed (It's somewhat sad that we all needed this category)
- Just don't even bother to finish (Which is even SADDER)
- Age inappropriate
- Oral sex really is sex
- Too drunk to get off

And now ... K-Rock!



K-Rock's list!
- Crazy in the head, crazy in the bed (We REALLY need to select better)
- Holy crap, you're old!
- The Big O
- Musicians (OMG)
- Peanut Butter Jelly Time
- In my parent's bed (Gross!)
- Oral
- Random bar hookup
- Somebody's second
- He smothered me
- Well. I guess so.
- 3 Ring Circus
- Experimental
- Are you in yet? (I cannot tell you how sad this makes me. This should never be on anybody's list! So sad!)

And now, I give you mine.



And my list:
- Crazy in the head, crazy in the bed
- Sheet ripping, lamp breaking
- It was Christmas, I was lonely
- I had sex with you while listening to Boyz 2 Men
- Age inappropriate
- Internacional
- Cyber
- Misc. Locations
- NOT my future husband
- WTF????
- Faked it.
- Didn't fake it.
- "Experimental" phase.
- I don't remember your name.
- I never asked your name.
- I was fantasizing about an American Idol while we were having sex.

That last one is embarrassing for me, too.

You, too, should learn to express yourself creatively through pottery painting.

 

The Tale of a Very Large Zit

First of all, I promise funny on Friday because that entry is about St. Patrick's Day (I know, FINALLY) and that night had good stories.

But today I really want to talk about this: Pretty Babies.

Firstly, let me say that I know mothers who engage in this behavior, though perhaps not as extreme as this article lays out. But I do know mothers whose eight year old daughters get manicures and eye brow waxings. I surely do. And worse yet, I actually think those little girls look adorable with their perfect pink nails and their perfectly sculpted eyebrows. Much like I think that ear piercing in little girls is cute. And to a certain degree, I hate myself for thinking that because I'd like for little girls to just get dirty, too. And I could not promise that if I had a little girl, by the time she was 10 she wouldn't have been dolled up like that. But I'd like to think that I had trained her to be dirty, too.

Dirty in the play in the dirt way. Stay with me.

Okay, so, the first thing that happened in that article was this brilliant line about what happens when we make girls too pretty, too young ... and "How, without the ugly years, will girls learn to accept themselves?"

And I agree.

My "ugly years" were in my early to mid twenties, kind of that last year or so of college and the first years of San Francisco. First, I gained some weight, people. Seriously. I was smoking a lot of pot near the end of college, which of course means extra weight - especially when you live in a college town where half of the economy is driven by pizza delivery that happens after 3:00am - no pun intended. And then I moved to a city where the 3:00am shwarma is king and Victor's Italian was right down the road and my life become more sedentary because I had an office job. My clothing size was almost double what I currently wear, though I guess in fairness I was also wearing my clothes baggier.

And my skin went bad. My skin has always been temperamental, but when I'm stressed out about something my immediate physical reaction to it is to break out. And I was stressed a lot during those years, so there was always some skin issue of varying degrees going on. And sometimes it was embarrassingly bad. Bad like the "before" stories in a Proactive infomercial. AND I WAS USING PROACTIVE AT THE TIME AND IT DIDN'T HELP. For example, one day when I was living with (I Love) Paul Jack, I woke up one morning and my skin was broken out so excessively that I couldn't even physically open my mouth. I had to call a doctor and drink through a straw for a day.

I'm probably remembering most of this as worse than it was - but that's not the point because I'm sure that a teenager who goes through her ugly years then remembers her breakout and unibrow as worse than it was too. What I know is that I felt insecure and unhappy about the way I looked, and I had to find other ways to like myself. Or, at a minimum, because that may be an overstatement, I had to be able to look in the mirror at my big, fat butt or my incredibly broken out face and just be angry about it, not hate myself for it.

And eventually the weight fell off. That's not true. Eventually I worked the weight off through changing my late night eating pattern and making it a point to work out.

And eventually, though I still respond to stress with a big zit here or there, my skin pretty much cleared up through better product, better birth control and a dryer climate.

So, back around Super Bowl time of this year, I was very stressed. Because as you know, for the last several years Super Bowl has been one of my most stressful times of the year. And I developed a stress zit. Actually, it was more like a stress boil. Actually it was more like an alien child trying to birth itself from a pod on my right jawline. It was bad. It actually literally was about the size of a quarter and took about two months to completely heal/drain. You couldn't look at me without seeing "Frank the Zit" first. *I* couldn't look at me without seeing it first. And I am single and ready to mingle and a huge blemish on my skin is not ideal.

So, ToniK and Mike and I go to the Super Bowl. And we're hanging out in the RV one night and "Frank the Zit" decides that this is when he wants to explode all over my face, meaning that I will now have a big, draining, scar-ridden cyst for the next two days while surrounded by hot available men at the Super Bowl.

And my response to this?

Literally...

My response is to shrug it off and say, "I mean, you know, whatever. If I were a super model, I wouldn't be hanging out in an RV with you yahoos at the Super Bowl. And that would kind of blow."

But most importantly, I meant it when I said that.

And I mean, the point is, if from the time I was a tiny tot I'd had perfect nails and perfect skin and perfect eyebrows, would I still be able to kind of shrug off the BIGGEST SKIN BLEMISH ANYBODY HAS EVER HAD - EVER and not think that it was something that really detracted from the awesomeness that is me as a whole? I mean, who knows, but probably not. I probably would have stressed about that stress zit for weeks and spent money better spent on saving starving African children on treatment after treatment and whined like it was the end of the world.

So I see the author's point. It's important that we're not always perfect on the outside so that we don't start to expect ourselves to be perfect, either on the outside or the inside. Or, more accurately, if we start to expect ourselves to be perfect on the outside, the degree to which we're imperfect on the inside will grow.

I hope that Sadie and Rayna and Cienna all have ugly years. I just hope that they don't have the kind that scar them for life but instead the kind that make them closer to perfect on the inside.

And I hope that the next time I get a big old stress zit, it's on the right side of my forehead so that I can brush my bangs over it and just conceal it.

 

The Final Frontier: Text Message Sex

Who should read this entry: K-Rock, Shim Shim, A-Train, a certain girl in LA I know who is the master of the dirty text (yeah, you know who you are Princess K). And also a certain girl in Chicago who is supposed to be learning to talk dirty from me.

Who should NOT read this entry:

Mom - you should skip this and head right down below it to where the first entry about Spain is.

Person With Whom I Had Text Message Sex Last Night: Don't read this if you ever want to enjoy that activity again. Seriously. Just don't read it. Trust me.

Anyway...

So, as a little background info, I've had this long distance ... thing ... going on for a while now. It's not a SMOS violation (even though SMOS technically ended yesterday!). It's not exclusive. It's not even really defined, but it is a ... thing.

Okay, so media has advanced to the point where the big frontier is no longer cyber sex. Remember when cyber sex was soooo weird and we longed for the days of good old fashioned 900 numbers? Oh no, people, oh no. We have advanced to the point of being mobile while we fuck each other in a virtual imaginary world. We have moved on to text message sex.

And with it comes something totally unique to text message sex as a form of virtual sex: mobility. With phone sex, you may have to juggle that receiver between your shoulder and your ear, but the verbal nature of the act at least requires you to honor the privacy of being alone, usually in your bed. Unless you are a frat boy sharing the experience during rush. With cyber sex, you are by default tied to the location of your computer. But with text message sex -- ah, with text message sex, you can be doing ANYTHING while simultaneously having virtual sex. Think of the possibilities!

Or, don't think of them and I'm going to lay them out for you by telling you the story of my night last night.

So, last night as I was heading home, I get a dirty text from ... let's call him Boom. And I read it, and I smile, and I send back an equally dirty one and think I'm done for the night. And then there is another text with a prompt, and I'm like "Seriously? He wants us to get off via TEXT MESSAGE?" But, whatever, I was there with him anyway. So, you know, games are fun. But, mobility. That's not necessarily conducive to virtual sex, particularly if you have ADD like me. Here's how the night laid out.

Being Typed Into My Phone
I just got out of the bath and I'm imagining rubbing my wet body up against you...
Coming Out of My Mouth
Hey! HEY! HEY! Can I get a sirloin burger, a super size diet coke and some jalapeno poppers? HEY?! Is anybody in there?

Being Typed Into My Phone
Before we even make it to the bedroom, I slide down and put my mouth around your cock...
Coming Out of My Mouth
FUCKIT. That jalapeno popper is HOT. SHIT. FUCK. DAMMIT.

Being Typed Into My Phone
I'm gently teasing you for a long time before I slide you all the way in...

Coming Out of My Mouth
FUCKKKKK. THE GODDAMN CAT PEED ON THE CARPET AGAIN. FUCKING CHRIST. DAMMIT.

Hot, right? Makes me long for the good old normal days of fake fucking on the computer.

But the real issue is if you think of the future. Cell phones - Devil's curse. But they make anything possible at any time. Think about our society's obsession with porn. Then think about the future of iPhones in everybody's hands. Then imagine a future in which people just walk around all day with a dazed look on their face getting off via text message.

I always said my iPhone replaced my need for a man.

 

Uganda: A Prologue

"So what are you doing right now, Jocelyn?"

"I'm sitting in the international lounge at JFK because I missed my connection and now I have to overnight it here for the first flight out tomorrow. SUCKS. But I thought I might as well go ahead and start posting the Africa updates while I'm here."

"Word."

So, we will, as usual, start with the random things that will not fit into any of the ongoing stories. They are numbered for convenience.

1. The Princess Pictures
So Franki, thinking he is a smart ass, throws out this challenge that I have failed in Africa if I do not come home with pictures of me "getting down with local and/or wild life while wearing a princess tiara." He clearly has no idea. The best ones are below. The full collection can be seen here.




Let me also say that this challenge necessitated a trip to Wal-Mart, which Slappy took with me. Slappy DOES NOT go to Wal-Mart. The vision of the agony in his face as we walked through Wal-Mart is still with me. No African child has ever suffered as much as that man suffered in our fifteen minutes in Wal-Mart. That is all.

2. You Will Need to Meet James
James was our driver for all twelve days of safari, though we preferred to affectionately call him "Jamsey." James was a patient man, as he must be, as anybody who will ever have traveled with Lis or I will tell you. He patiently waited through bathroom breaks, perfect photo breaks, late mornings, chatty girls, cranky girls and thunderous rain storms and mudslides to get us wherever we wanted to go. He thought something was wrong with me because I often skipped lunch. He would look at me and say, "But eet is paaaiid for." Once he tried to tell me that men are confused when what they want is a skinny girl because when you go to the grocery store to buy a chicken you don't look for the skinniest one. I tried to explain to him that I was not a chicken in a grocery store, but no go. There are many other funny stories about James that we'll talk about later. Here's a picture.



Actually, here's one more James story. James has a little portable dvd player that he takes on the road with him. It cost him $370,000 Ugandian shillings, which is more than twice the monthly salary of a school teacher, and teachers are paid pretty well there. It's his pride and joy. He likes Nigerian films, but he also likes some American films. I thought I might send some dvds to him (by which I mean two copies of every dvd I send so customs can keep one and James can get one). So I ask what kind of American movies he likes.

"There is this American actris...alllliii bari."

"Halle Berry?"

"Yes! She was in this one movie, and she did a very strong job."

And then he starts describing the movie and, no joke, it's this.

Don't worry, James, "Die Another Day" and "Catwoman" are on their way.

3. So That You Don't Need to Wait Till the End for an Answer
You know, the big discussion before I left, with just about everybody, was "Where do you stand on the idea that the best aid for Africa is no aid for Africa?"

And you know, I admitted that I didn't know where I stood. And also, Uganda is only one country and I was only there for a little over two weeks, so it's not like I'm some kind of expert. But I did come back thinking that the best aid for Africa is no aid for Africa unless you have a super great idea on how you're going to skip the government "filtering" process and get your dollars directly to the people. There's no denying that this is an area that's primed for corruption. Imagine having all of the corruption of competing political parties, but compound it by the fact that there are competing political systems as well (a westernized government from when Uganda was a British colony and a traditional royalty structure for each tribe and then the unified tribes). It's a country where I could be in a village of ten mud huts and get a Coke or a Guinness, but don't ask anybody where the nearest place to get Mephaquin is or, if they did know where the nearest place to get medications was, how to get there without functioning roads and systematic public transportation. It's a country less than thirty years removed from the tyranny of Idi Amin and still skeptical of any power structure. As they should be given that their current President wants to be a lifetime president. It's a country where torture camps and places where children were burned to death are still pointed out by your driver. It's a country that was given a billion plus dollars to prepare for CHOGM and, from what I can see, must have only spent money on signs that said "Are You Ready for CHOGM?" Because I can assure you, billions of dollars of improvements were not made in that country for the upcoming heads of government meeting.

And so that's the problem. The country (and lots of the continent) needs aid, but financial aid is actually going to make the problems there worse. It will get a percentage taken off the top by the government officials. And that percentage will be the majority percentage and will in no way go to creating the infrastructure and resources and programs needed to improve health and prosperity in Africa for the masses. It will just further stratify and increase the power of the few while doing nothing for the people you believe you're sending aid for. And that's the most depressing thing you take out of there with you. Though I've done some research, and Ashleigh is doing a fund raiser, and I'm going to give you some places later on where you really can impact change if you want.

That is all.

4. Except That That Is Not All
Because, really, the lesson learned in Africa can be summed up by this part of a conversation I was having with somebody in Heathrow today.

"I live in Vegas. All I see all day long is people coming there to escape from their day-to-day life because they're miserable and unhappy in it. And every way in which they escape involves spending money. You see the most miserable people in Vegas, and you watch money in absurd sums just roll in and roll out. And then you go to Africa. And the people have nothing, they really have nothing. And they're happy. They're so much happier than you could imagine. "

That REALLY is all. Tomorrow we begin story telling.