The thoughts & opinions of Sassarella, the Queen of Sass as she cavorts in 's Gravenhage & beyond. Brought to you by CES's (Chief Executive Slaves) of Big Skanky Ho Inc.
The Dave Gahan show was surprisingly good. The opening act did an awesome version of Welcome to the Jungle, and then Dave Gahan proceeded to rock the house. Since I was more or less unfamiliar with his new stuff, I wasn't expecting much, but he did some Depeche Mode stuff that sounded really really good.
Also, his bass player had no teeth.
All in all, a pretty decent way to spend Halloween.
Anyway, the option of California has been added to the list. So, the options are thus:
Toronto Cambodia California Beirut
Vote now or forever hold your peace. (Don't worry, Aleta, I'm thinking of you and the soon-to-be Minileta) posted by Alleen at 12:34:56 PM
Friday, October 31, 2003
I'm off to Brussels today to go see Dave Gahan in concert (the lead singer of Depeche Mode). This is a little weird as I've not heard the new album and I haven't been keeping up much with Depeche Mode lately. But whatever; any excuse for a party.
Anyway... things have become slightly more settled in my head so I'm not so discombobulated... the goats are wandering away from my roof etc etc. On the downside, now I have nothing to obsess about, and the winter blahs are closing in... Bored and mildly depressed are never a good combination for me, so I'm thinking that after my finances are a little settled, it may be time to hit somewhere with some sun.
On the other hand, I could start thinking about my future seriously again. Argh.
Anyway, for Christmas, these are the options. I can either go to Toronto, or Cambodia, or visit Beirut. Vote now. posted by Alleen at 11:41:01 AM
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
When I was a kid, I had some pretty messed up ideas about sex. The first books I read that didn't have pictures in them were my mother's romance novels, probably sometime around the age of nine or ten, when she started getting me to return them to the library. Picture being that young and getting your first idea of sex from a romance novel. The only thing I'd seen in movies was two people kissing, then the bed, and the cutaway; the romance novels were the first thing that gave you an idea of the whole process, from attraction to completion.
For example, we have the phenomenon of men's thighs. Maybe it was just the ones I read, but there seemed to be an inordinate amount of attention paid to men's thighs. Like "the silky fabric of his well-cut trousers stretched taut against his strong manly thighs as he sat down." or "Her gaze was riveted by the sight of his well-muscles thighs in his brief swimming trunks." I'm not quoting exactly here, but you get the idea. At the time, I took this stuff pretty literally, wondering what the attraction was to thighs. I spent a lot of time as an 10-year-old staring at men's thighs, trying to figure out what the big deal was. Maybe they weren't the right thighs or something, but I never got it. It only occurred to me much later that when you're looking at a man's thighs (or if your gaze is riveted by them even) you're staring straight at his crotch. Strong, manly thighs was a romance novel's subtle way of saying... well, you get the idea.
The really bad one was the actual process of sex. Describing sexual encounters without making it sound dirty is a tricky business, and the good old cliche of water-related metaphors is every romance writer's stand-by. So the starry-eyed couple would start with a kiss, passion would build, clothes would come off and then next things you know, she's "drowning in an ocean of passion," or "her body was drenched by a tide of desire," or "rising waves of sensation poured through her as he took possession," or something equally ridiculous. I guess I was a pretty literal minded kid because I actually thought that sex was basically two people would start kissing, their clothes would "melt away," and then somehow, magically, they'd end up on a beach. What they'd do there, I wasn't sure. I guess I imagined a "From Here to Eternity" kind of scene, with Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster on the beach, which featured some pretty sexy, but basically chaste kissing.
Sadly, sex ed pretty much threw all this stuff out the window. Though to be honest, the beach scenario was a bit more fun than the purely mechanical lectures we got in school. Magically being transported to a beach is somehow more appealing than egg fertilisation, fallopian tubes, and the like.
Hmmm... the new song by the Strokes is on MTV as we speak. 'Sokay.
