A Saturday Afternoon with Josh and Jess

JESS: i'm bored
JOSH: i just took a shower and i'm on careernet
JESS: mmm hot and wet
JOSH: hot and sweaty
JESS: i want to get laid tonight
JOSH: lol splash
JESS: i don't know why your skinny wet body made me think of that
JESS: actually i do ;) ;) ;)
JOSH: well i believe i still owe you a makeout sesh
JESS: i knoww
JOSH: but that's as far as that's going
JESS: my loins ache for you josh becker
JESS: lol *silence*
JESS: hello?
JESS: HELLO???

A Friday Night with Josh and Jess

JESS: i just smoked a bowl like 2 mins ago i’m so high
JOSH: find something funny. the link itself is stupid just read the url name out loud: http://funnyharhar.com
JESS: haha
JOSH: im so high
JESS: really?
JESS: me toooo lol
JOSH: well cuz after i took one hit i resmoked because i figured if i was staying in to be high
JOSH: i was gonna be high
JESS: oh man LOL
JOSH: LOL
JESS: classic

*video chat with Josh dancing and Jess laughing hysterically while her roommate looks on quizzically*

JOSH: i can’t handle that right now
JESS: ew me neither

JESS: look at this picture

I literally look mentally retarded but LOL at me and Josh's conversation and LOL at him dancing and LOL at "azn hipsters are good for something," I swear it made sense in context.

JOSH: LOL at yr caption to this photo, lol @ your face
JESS: haha. you liked david caruso licorice?
JESS: i’m so hungry
JOSH: okay i know you don’t like south park but you have to trust me
JOSH: just skip to 3:40 into the video: http://www.southparkzone.com/episodes/805/You-Got-Fd-in-the-A.html

*five minutes later*

JESS: wait i got a text and forgot i was watching
JESS: i can’t do this right now
JOSH: no just like watch him dance its like 20 seconds
JESS: lol yeah i saw, luvina was dancing
JOSH: LOL wtf
JOSH: is luvina there?
JESS: LOL no
JOSH: LOL wtf

-Jess

This isn't news

Sad women like to fuck?

Really, Telegraph? Because it's not like sexual promiscuity is a symptom of depression or anything.

It makes complete sense that women who are lonely and sad crave physical intimacy; and maybe they are lonely and sad because their marriage is failing, so they seek to fulfill their sexual appetite in potentially "dangerous" and "immoral" ways, which are then deemed "promiscuous."

Sometimes I feel like all these studies are just stating the obvious. Anyone with a knowledge of the inner workings of the human mind can surmise that people who are lonely don't want to be alone. And boy what orgasms do for the morale...

-Jess

Death Cab goes dissonant, recondite

Supposed album artwork for Death Cab's newest album, Narrow Stairs

I'm not really embarrassed to say that I like Death Cab for Cutie and all of Ben Gibbard's solo projects. That said, I'm super excited for their new album, to be released in May, DCFCesquely entitled Narrow Stairs. Their newest project is supposedly a grand departure from the poppy, upbeat Plans, released now almost 3 years ago. A listen to the song I Will Possess Your Heart on the band's Myspace indicates critics may be right about this one; dark, solemn and dissonant, the song reeks of a delightful synthesis of Radiohead and Gibbardish sorrow. I think I'm going to dig this new album, which is good, because I thought Plans was severely disappointing.

-Jess

That's because they haven't seen MY vag

From Jezebel:

"The most beautiful vagina in New York." Yes, friends, that's how Eliot Spitzer's very own "Kristen" (aka Ashley Alexandra Dupre) was known in the high-class call girl community when she first entered the scene as "Victoria" in 2004. Says Jason "King of all Pimps" Itzler: "Big hedge-fund guys, the heaviest hitters, called and I'd say this is the girl with the magic pussy, the best in New York." Confirms Itzler's ex Natalie "The $2,000-an-Hour Woman" McLennan, "As soon as I saw her coochie, I told Jason, this is special." Um, can anyone tell us what makes a vagina "the most beautiful," "magic," and "special"? It's been bothering us all week.

No really. What makes a vagina so glorious? Okay yeah tightness. Okay probably (for most men) hairlessness. But if you know how to do your kegels and yield a razor, can't all women have the most special (read: most societally sought-after) vagina in the world? I mean, I love mine. I keep telling my friends they have to love theirs or else they're not going to have good orgasms. They don't have to love mine, just theirs. They should love mine though because it's pretty fucking magical.

-Jess

PS. No there's no way I'm posting a pic to go along with this entry.

Just because I touched your arm during a conversation doesn't mean I want to fuck you

I don't want to fuck you, I just want to platonically and drunkenly straddle you!

My co-worker Elizabeth e-mailed this to me yesterday and I feel like it explains so much about my life that it's terrifying. It's scary to me how at the base of it, we really are just this clusterfuck of atoms, buzzing around, bumping into each other, and that all of our behavior has a scientific explanation (which usually somehow relates back to basic human instincts, like the desire to mate in this case).

It is no secret that I am a little bit coquettish. I "flirt" with the men who bag my groceries at the supermarket, with taxi drivers and men in subway cars and people at my work. People are constantly pointing it out to me, but the trouble is that I don't consider what I do to be flirting.

Yes I am an animated talker, and I crave physical affection so I will touch a boy's knee or something while talking to him, but rarely does it mean I want to fuck him. And I've been in so many situations where just because I smile back at the leering truck driver, he assumes I'm actually into him.

So this article makes me feel a little better. It's not that I'm overtly flirty, it's just that some men happened to misinterprate my friendliness for sexual attraction. I mean, FYI, when I'm attracted to you, you'll know it. I'm not really a shy person.

I feel like this article could have saved me so much time in high school. I should print it out and carry it around with me and any time a gross guy asks me out on a date simply because I flicked my hair, I can hand it to him and be like, "Read up, buddy. This lady's got standards."

-Jess

What could be more important

than Obama's Final Four picks?

Oh, maybe his speech on race relations. And maybe being the first black man to win the democratic bid. And potentially representing the United States in the WORLD POLITICAL FORUM.

Oh right. That.

-Jess

Buy me these

This post has no purpose other than to showcase gorgeous dresses I found while lazily browsing Urbanoutfitters.com. I wish I were rich. Or I had a rich boyfriend. Or I could charge the governor $4,000 for a blowjob.

1.

The Eros Olivia Dress; $319.99

I am still very much into bows. Does this make me a three year old? Perhaps. But my roommate has an adorable cream chiffon Marc Jacobs frock with satin straps and a bow in the center, so I'm thinking Eros is doing something right. It's very demure, but also short, as most of my clothes are.

2.

Dolce Vita Emma Dress, 224.99
I wouldn't mind if the material were less satin and more gauzy cotton, but the color would look good on me (and any pale person for that matter), and the synthesis of a short, feminine cocktail dress and echoes of a man's tuxedo in the collar area is quite genius.

3.

Kimchi and Blue Dolly Shirt Dress, $48.00
If you know anything about fashion, you know that florals are in this spring, and this black and white shirt dress screams 90s and heroin chic in all the right ways.

EDIT: But wait! From topshop.com:

1.

Romantic Frill Dress, £50.00 (About $110)
The color! The cut! The ruffles! GIMME.

2.

Linen Bib Dress, £65.00 (About $150)
For the slutty Nun in every girl.

When you're here, you're family

It's Thursday night, aka college night, aka the New Friday. Josh (Ana, Ashley) and I just got back from the Olive Garden. Yes, we got high and went to the Olive Garden. We waited 25 minutes amongst the riffraff of tourists and yuppy men courting poofy haired women at the bar ($12 a cocktail) and unimaginably obese women with slobbery jowls practically brought to tears by the thought of their $15 heaping plate of fettucini alfredo.

The breadsticks are what made the trek to 6th and 23rd worth it. (Josh's note: We took a cab there.) A perfect combination of salt and garlic, butter and warm, doughy bread. I kind of forgot how unsalady the salads are though. I stopped eating iceburg lettuce in middle school; Olive Garden has yet to stop serving it.

One bite of my portobello ravioli made me forget I was anywhere but the Italian countryside. Okay, not really, but it was better than the whole wheat pasta with Prego I eat at home. And those breadsticks...

The funny part is that even the people who work at Olive Garden hate Olive Garden. Maybe even more than the normal person. Upon asking how many O.G.'s there are in Manhattan, our waiter responded, "Two. Two too many." He looked like Thom Yorke. He knew we were stoned.

Our meal was $65 for four people. Mmm, maybe excessive when you consider we live across from La Esquina and down the street from various other uppity 5 star restaurants.

So goodbye to you, dear Olive Garden. You served me well in the suburbs, for celebrating good report cards and Aunts and Uncles' depressing fifty-something birthdays. But I bid you adieu, fair Olive Garden. Even the breadsticks will never again lure me back into your poorly lit, understaffed, fake Tuscan decorated hallowed halls.

-Jess

This is enough to restore my faith in humanity...

...for five seconds at least.

Since the death of his lifelong partner and wife Catherine in 2005, Mr. Charles Whiting spends a few minutes each day listening to her voice on the answering machine. A bony finger perched gracefully atop the receiver, slowly tracing the memorized trajectory of his own phone number, only wanting to hear the grainy, whispered voice of a woman he spent his whole life loving, and after her death, now spends his life missing.

Can someone love me that much? Plzzzzzz?

-Jess

How Solzhenitsyn ruined my childhood

The stuffed animals of my best friends and I. From left to right, top to bottom. Dina's Lammy, Meg's Michael, Grace's Daisy and My Puffalump

When I was little my Dad used to read me bedtime stories. But he didn't read me Dr. Seuss. My Dad read me articles from The Atlantic Monthly or The New Republic. But his favorite thing to read to me was One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Like... LOL. Who reads that to their five year old? My friends were learning about how Jack and Jill went up a hill and every night I went to sleep with images of prison labor camps and barbed wire and starving Russians in my head. Is it any wonder I'm such a fuckup?


I wonder how much the books we read as a child impact us. Maybe Solzhenitsyn had something to do with my bizarrely dark and uncharacteristically mature obsession with the Holocaust from grades 3-6. I didn't like a book unless it moved me to tears with its horror. I'm still kind of like that.


Sure I liked The Babysitter's Club and Cam Jansen, and Horton Hears a Who was cute and all, but I gravitated more towards the disturbing parallelism of The Lorax, which all but damned anti-conservationists to a fiery hell of no trees and smoggy air. Poor Lorax. He went to heaven by the seat of his pants. :(


So I'm going to go ahead and blame my depressingly shortened childhood on Solzhenitsyn and his nightmare-inducing Denisovich. If my Dad had read me Goodnight Moon instead I may have turned out quite differently. Um, or maybe not.


-Jess

Is Jess a womanhater?

I spend a lot of time harping on women's issues. So much time, in fact, that Josh frequently mocks me for it publicly. (<3 youuu)

Last night my friend messaged me a conversation between he and this girl. The girl was so obviously fishing for compliments the entire time that I couldn't even finish the convo. He handled it gracefully, but her obvious need for validation (almost 8 years after said incident even occurred) completely made me ashamed for my gender.



Because there are some women who completely perpetuate the Cosmo stereotype: love me, need me, want me, I am yours for the taking, I am here solely to satisfy you.



The thing that I hate the most is that I've totally acted that way before. Is it in our DNA to constantly need to be complimented? Are there women out there who are self-assured enough to know that when men compliment you it's generally for one of two reasons: 1) They want to sleep with you or 2) They catch on that you want to be complimented, and do so to satisfy you so that they can sleep with you.



I think a lot of women play into this shit because they're expected to. I can spot a needy, pathetic woman from a mile away and it literally makes me feel disgusted. Why are you so clingy? Why can't you treat sex the way a man does? Why do you act like you're some fairy princess awaiting your prince charming to come sweep you off your feet? Not gonna happen, honey. And yeah, I know I'm sinister about this subject, I mean, that's kind of what my experiences have taught me. But from what I can tell, we as women are doing it to ourselves by not communicating how our boyfriends can make us come and by constantly acting like victims and by taking their bullshit.



It sucks my sympathy for women right out. Stop playing victim, and maybe you'll stop being treated like one.



-Jess

BACARDI PARTY: How young is too young?

Me at 17

I was 14 when I had my first sip of alcohol. It was at one of my friend's houses, her mom was away, and we broke into the liquor cabinet and siphoned a bit of whiskey. It tasted like shit, it burned my throat, but above all things I remember feeling unbelievably powerful. My parents couldn't touch that feeling. School couldn't even get close. I wanted to be a badass and set myself apart from the suburban drones that clogged the hallways of my high school existence, and alcohol was totally the liquid cure for my landlocked blues. (5 points to those of you who get that pretentious reference)

It was exciting to lie to my parents and sneak around and feel that buzz between my eyes. Drinking was the secret that bonded my friends and I together, galvanizing us in this unspoken rivalry, kids vs. parents, counterculture vs. mainstream, and in our minds, right vs. wrong.

In a lot of ways I'm grateful that I started experimenting at such a young age. It definitely set me up with an advantage at college; I am much more mature and responsible about alcohol than some of my friends who didn't drink in high school. And though I had quite the wild freshman year at NYU, drinking early did not feed me into a downward spiral into heavier and heavier drugs. (If anything I'm sure the level I experimented last year had more to do with living alone in New York City than anything)

But how young is too young? Drinking taught me how to be responsible, but it also taught me how to regret. There were the useless hookups, the Xanga entries that inevitably got me in trouble with my parents, and the bad decisions; I was never dumb enough to drive drunk, but I know a lot of people in my school were. It's irrational behavior like that that taints the inherently innocent nature of experimentation. Experimenting can lead to some pretty bad choices.

I think young girls especially need to watch out if they decide to start drinking at a young age. It's so easy to be taken advantage of that it's really quite frightening. If you're going to drink, go with a group of friends, don't put your drink down, and don't talk to a guy who has gel in his hair or a popped collar. In fact, that's rule number one. Popped collars/gel = rape.

Some of the things that really affected who I was in high school were shaped by alcohol. If you go to a small school like I did, you know that most rumors stem from nights that you kind of wish would just disappear. But they don't disappear, and they shape your reputation, and if your dad's the principal of your high school, then you're probably kind of fucked.

As with all things, experimentation is good in moderation. I fully support reducing the drinking age to 16, or at least 18, like in European countries; there's less alcohol abuse among people of all ages, and way less binge drinking. People there can have a casual glass of wine without progressing to shots and passing out with their skirt up around their hips and their best friend drawing dicks on them with sharpies. I fucking hate when that happens.

-Jess

Mac Attack IV: It's Been a While

The Mac Dictionary is a wonderful thing. Sometimes, it is also a hilarious thing. The hilarity usually lies in the example sentences it gives for its definitions; from the inane to the non-informative to the borderline offensive, there's always fun to be had when you absolutely have nothing better to do. Here are today's selections:

Before we begin, let me take a moment to thank an astute, anonymous reader, who left a comment linking to perhaps the funniest Mac dictionary moment I've ever seen. That will not stop me from trying to find some other ones of my own, however.

Crazy- "mentally deranged, esp. as manifested in a wild or aggressive way : Stella went crazy and assaulted a visitor ."
F'real? What? That's not crazy, that's just...violent and unpleasant. Maybe that "visitor" was actually a robber or rapist or both? Then what should Stella had done? I bet these misogynistic Mac etymologists would like to see Stella do nothing but slip into something more comfortable. Plus, Stella is such a totally outdated name.

Drunk- "informal a drinking bout; a period of drunkenness : he used to go on these blind drunks."
That's awful. Get off those blind drunks! They're probably confused enough as it is.

Hipster- "informal a person who follows the latest trends and fashions. | Derivatives: hipsterism |-ˌrizəm| noun"
I don't really have a problem with the definition; it's the derivative that gets me. Hipster is now an "-ism" word, which means that someone in Gallatin is eventually going to major in it. And then they'll research their thesis by working at American Apparel. And, you know, doing lots of blow. Whatever.

The- "denoting one or more people or things already mentioned or assumed to be common knowledge : what's the matter? | call the doctor | the phone rang."
I really wish the third example clause was listed first; that would make this a nice little medical drama. They're canceling E.R. after this season, you know.

-Josh

Reporting live from a suburban hellhole

My dog Cocoa

There are good things about being home, mainly:

1. Digital Cable On Demand
2. Free food
3. My gym has TVs attached to the treadmills
4. My dog
5. Wawa

There are bad things about being home:

1. I can never fall asleep because it's too fucking quiet. I need noise. I need garbage trucks and fighting drunken tourists and honking cabs.
2. My sister has grown into a 16 year old brat. I can't really talk because I was a disaster in high school, but she fights with my parents constantly.
3. Shuttling back and forth between my Dad's and Mom's is an unpleasant reminder of so many bad high school memories.

I did watch Gone Baby Gone and Beautiful Ohio last night, both of which were absolutely incredible. I got high and ate Nature's Valley Granola Cereal. I slept in and went to the gym and watched Keeping Up with the Kardashians. But now I am going back to New York. To all of you spending the break in suburban hell: Josh and I feel for you, and we will drink to you, and we will also probably laugh at you.

-Jess