Category Archives: Person

Unions

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Noun: Unions.  Opinion: Conflicted.

Noun credit: Jen.


Among the nicer, more conscientious of you, there may be those who were wondering where the Judgmentor hath been these many weeks.  Among the rest of you are those who never really noticed the absence but are curious now that the topic has been brought up.  And the remaining of you may go back to playing Farmville for all I care.

Where have I been?  I’ve been busy.  Growing more deeply disenchanted with the world is a time-consuming business, I’ll have you know.  I have been off having what little remained of my idealism touched in private parts.  I have been occupied with the violation of an entire life philosophy.  In short, I have been busy becoming more cynical.

The easy joke here is to laugh a not very slightly supercilious laugh, the way Americans laugh at European people, and ask if that is even possible.  Just so you know, there is no faster way to have me get my sanctimony on.  Idealism is not vacuous, or silly, or embodied by your Tickle-Me-Elmo approach to life.  It is not always graced with beauty but it always has an element of splendor.  As if there were virtue in serenity, in canopied buoyancy, in blinding smiles and drawing your mental curtains to screen out the ugly.  Who’s more cynical, I ask—me, who had pursued an exquisite chimera, or you, chipper as you were, who never questioned whether the world could be better?  Me, who made choices with the faith that the result would direct itself towards a normative path, or you, who made negative decisions by accepting the positive reality?  What’s a more cynical statement: “This goddamn fucking sucks” or “That’s ok, it’s just the way things are”?  No, this is not me getting defensive, this is me not getting you.  Some idealists focus on the positive, some focus on the negative, but none of us find willful ignorance funny.  Skepticism is not cynicism, though admittedly it’s a slippery slope.

Chew on that while I climb off my soapbox.  Anyway, the point is that the slope turns into an outright freefall down the rabbit hole.  I (barely) stand witness to it.

The Judgmentor, in fact, never left.  The problem was that my last entry was up for all of two minutes before I took it down—it was too dark, too much, too Tori Amos on downers and pomposity.  It’s the space my brain is in right now.  For the first time in my career, I am working with unions.  For the first time, I am working with those without graduate degrees or suburban upbringings or ambitions that don’t involve winning the lottery.  For the first time, I am working with the noble proletariat, the great unwashed masses who struggle mightily against the new feudal system of capitalism, those whose income come from honest labor and not from exploitative ownership of the means of the production they make possible.  As vulnerable as they are to abuse and mistreatment, as susceptible as they can be to corporate manipulation, do they not have a right to protection?

Well, yes.

Do they deserve it?

Fuck, no.

But not because they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or some such Tory nonsense.  I don’t buy into a merit system based on accumulated wealth, it smacks too much of over-simplification chased with malice (hear me, Fox News cocksuckers?).  Unions don’t deserve to exist because people fundamentally SUCK and because they don’t stop at protecting the innocent from the exploitation of management.  They will grab, snatch and claw at more.  Samuel Gompers, leader of American unions and founder of the AF of L, summed up human nature when he said “we do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more.”   And voila the suckiness of mankind—this isn’t the innocent organizing against corporate evil, this is a simple case of assholery versus assholery.

And what kind of result can possibly manifest from a war of assholes?  Never a good one.  Where’s Troy today, after all (or Greece, for that matter)?  The distortions to the free market system I’ve witnessed that were direct consequences of the union and their irrational demands have been astounding in scope.  Hey, I’m no unadulterated fan of competitive capitalism—but however rickety its operations when left alone, it is fucked upside-down when you introduce a market abortion like a collective bargaining agreement.  What you can do, say, suggest, how you can execute, scratch your pits and carry out reasonable business practices is completely hamstrung.  There is jockeying and posturing on both sides, each trying to position themselves with perceived advantages.  The most charming part about the battle is how very human it can be— arbitrary, irrational, and mean-spirited.  Unions will negotiate themselves right out jobs just out of spite.  Businesses will resort to any covert maneuver to save a buck.   And after all that, management still treats workers like shit.  If asked by any of the manual laborers I come into contact with, you better believe I tell them to go union.

And thus my idealism lies gasping for breath on the asphalt, bleeding from the head.  Beaten to a pulp by the misled notion that responsible self-interest can exist and butt-raped with a broomstick by the idea of dignity inherent in simpler lives.  Absurd, of course.  But worth saving…on the off-off-off-chance that despite all evidence to the contrary, there is someone out there who’ll deserve and benefit from the elusive justice idealism lives to enable.  Because his or her demise is a far greater injustice than all the ill-begotten victories of the assholes put together.  So I’ll resuscitate that pathetic invalid, bandage its wounds, and have it live another day, keeping it alive on bare faith and defiance alone.  It’s gnarled and broken and looks a little like an old Chinese Crested with conjunctivitis, but it’s goddamn splendid.

Harry Reid

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Noun: Harry Reid. Opinion: Not OK.

Noun credit: Erica.


Get over here, Harry, right this minute. This here rolled-up newspaper is for whacking your fug face. You’re lucky it isn’t a cast-iron pipe. What you said is NOT OK.

I’m mad at you not because what you said was untrue, I’m mad because you’re a douchebag who never bothered to exorcise your racist demons. HELL YEAH, I dropped the r-bomb. Kaboom! Kerplooie! No, I’m not taking it back, because it’s true. You can raise uncomfortable observations about race in America and not be racist; you can even express racial generalizations and not be racist. There are intelligent ways to do this, but you didn’t, and that’s why I think you’re a racist (whabam!). I mean, I don’t think the word “racist” carries as much pejorative weight as, say, the word “Negro” uttered by an old white man. Pwned! On top of it all, I’m mad at all your little minions who are going through the most absurd mental contortions trying to defend your pathetic dumbassery.

Seriously, people, what does it take? What does it fucking take to call a spade a goddamn bigoted retard? Does one seriously have to don a pointed cap and dance a jig around a burning cross? If after years of social conditioning, political experience, message spinning, PC-brainwashing and Democratic propaganda you have failed to eliminate the word “Negro” from your vocabulary, it has to suggest that your urge to profile based on skin-color grows deep motherfucking roots. How white, male, privileged and self-entitled do you have to be to so ludicrously out of touch?

Hey, I live in the Mecca of out-of-touchiness. New York is to the United States what Pluto is to the solar system—it belonged at one point but by now has been demoted to a freestanding asteroid populated by freakashit aliens. Beam me into any state whose shape involves a right angle and stick a fork in me. But I’d know better than to sally up to a man wearing the largest hat in the nearest saloon and tell him that God is a gay man who thinks America sucks cock (a compliment in some parts of the world). There are just some things better left unsaid.

How you say what you say matters. I KNOW—if only people could take everything you said at face value and not read into it, we wouldn’t be such oversensitive assholes! Especially when it comes to race, we get all touchy like we’re having our taints poked with a slave owner’s whip. Why do people make things so complicated? Well, for one, because you lie (like, all the fucking time) and for two, because the words you choose signal ten billion things about you and how your message should be absorbed. Anyone who has been asked how they are by the observably disfranchised cashier at Duane Reade knows that bitch doesn’t care because she’s cutting you with her eyes. And if at the end of your transaction she says: “Have a nice day, you fucking chink,” that would indicate…something. I wouldn’t actually think she was indicating her emotional investment in the manner in which my day played out. I would think she was an ignorant cunt.

What’s really complicated is the lengths to which we’ll go to rationalize stupid behavior. What’s complicated is how to deal with someone in such a position of power and influence when they do something bad, especially if their power and influence can win you wars with high stakes. What’s complicated is how we’ve come about using the amount of melanin produced by a person’s flesh as a shortcut to determining his or her value. What’s complicated is the evolution of language and its use to designate belonging and separation. What’s not complicated is finding a way to say this: American voters still harbor prejudices. Obama looks and presents in a way that mitigates these prejudices. Shit, I wish getting out of bed in the morning were so easy.

And while I’m at judmentorizing on books I haven’t read, let me have at Bill Clinton. Oh, I’ve been a huge Clinton apologist for years; I couldn’t have cared less how many dresses he squirted on that belonged to women other than his wife, it didn’t seem relevant to me. But saying something like “a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee” in reference to Obama is…blargh. This hurts deep, Bill. Because while being a fat slut doesn’t necessarily subvert a nation’s progress, being a dismissive wanker with malicious intent makes the entire goddamn universe worse. I could get over your skankiness, your tubbiness, your habit of letting your tongue loll out of your mouth like a junkyard dog in the sun, I even got over your ridiculous southern accent. But I don’t know if I’ll get over this, if it’s true. Ah, the hell with you, you prick.

As for Obama, I’d like to see him for once not accept an apology. Man up, now. You don’t have to tell them off, but when they apologize in the rote, phony way everyone does who’s ever been caught with a dick in his mouth (“I want to apologize for what I said/did. It was in no way meant to hurt/offend you. I’m very sorry and hope you accept my apology.”), just look them up and down and say: “No, thanks.” Just to show them, and the rest of the world, that what they did is not OK.

Tiger Woods

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Noun: Tiger Woods.  Opinion: Pedestrian and formulaic.

Noun credit: Ginelle.


OK, can we talk about this now?  Is it too soon?  Too late?  Who the fuck cares, let’s talk about this.  Some of you have been asking me what I think and have successfully caught the Judgmentor off-guard—I’ve managed to care so little about one of the biggest stories of the last year that I had barely formed a zygote of an opinion.  So I’ve asked a lot of you what you think in return, hoping you’d come up with an answer for me.  Compelling arguments have been made, but none have actually moved me to really…CARE.  I don’t care!  I just don’t.  I don’t care about golf, I find it tedious to both play and watch.  I don’t care about fallen idols, I’ve been through too many.  I don’t care about men who treat their wives like shit and women who exploit other women’s husbands for money, there are only so many hours in the day and they are not worth my time.  God help me, I can’t find it in me to give two dookies about any of it.

But I’ll judge anyway, since that’s what I do.  The situation has been analyzed to death from every angle—if nothing else, after years of being the worst beat assigned to a pap, Tiger somehow managed to become interesting (at least to other people).  Since hypocrisy still makes news—for which we may be perversely thankful—Tiger’s “transgressions” cut deep into the airy confection that was his manufactured image.  Remember the Nike commercial where a kaleidoscope of children claimed that they were Tiger Woods?  One shudders to think of a world populated by such bungling womanizers clogging up voice mailboxes with nonsensical demands.  I don’t think I could stand the mortification.

And that’s the thing that resonates most deeply about this story, at least for me.  Woods has pleaded for his privacy, and all I want to do is give it to him.  But he won’t get out of my papers, websites, he’s moved into my goddamn head—all six foot one high, half-inch deep, Caucasian-Black-Asian-Xenomorph-Thetan-average-looking motherfucker that he is.  I have an inexplicable soft spot for people who draw celebrity and ungodly income before they are equipped to handle them—Tiger’s gifts and circumstance were hardly a choice, despite thousands of hours of practice and endeavor.  He was a vehicle for divine talent and a magnet for outside ambitions before he had a chance to develop an idea of his own identity—he was nearly predestined to screw it up eventually.  He says he’s pulling out of the game to reflect on who he is, yet not only does he have years to catch up on but severe damage to redress—a young soul is scorched by the same flicker that would barely singe a hale and mature heart, and there are few fires that burn hotter than that of money and fame.  I don’t envy him this work, if he bothers with it.

I can’t feel too sorry for him though, since I do envy—deeply—his bank account.  Given the value of the sponsorships he had, I could agree to lifetime abstinence.  Easy.  I’d have all the money and time in the world to buy cupcakes and eat beef shortribs and ride roller-coasters and play with my hair and travel to Greek islands on my own fucking catamaran and whatever it took to distract me.  And if I were to judge a man by the women he chooses to court—which I do, and often—I’m not convinced I’d be willing to sit on the far end of the same bench with this guy.  Not only could the crabs travel, but he seems desperately dull.  OK, so life in its weird, contrarian way gave you a raw deal by endowing you with a retardedly unfair advantage.  Said advantage done fucked your head up but good.  Couldn’t you at least come up with a more original way to self-destruct?  I mean, adultery’s so cliché.  How about cross-dressing?  Addiction to plastic surgery?  Death by prescription meds has been done, but it hasn’t jumped the shark yet.

And if that was in bad taste (I call mulligan), so was nearly everything you did off the golf course.  Look, if you’re going to use women as mere masturbatory devices, allow me to offer a safer alternative and introduce you to your hand.  You even have the option of choosing between two of them!  I can only imagine what manual dexterity an athlete like you must possess, I’m sure you’ll be happy together.  If that doesn’t do it for you, then here’s a straw to suck up the consequences of being a manwhore and wounding your family and disappointing your supporters.  Many do it, and some get their comeuppance worse than others, but such is life.  Sucky sucky!

There are a lot of little facets to this story that I didn’t touch—like the role of race and sex addiction and the impact on sports and the corporate risk of celebrity endorsement—but wouldn’t you know it?  In this context, I don’t care about any of it.  In terms of shitty things other people do to other people, this registers pretty low on my barometer of personal investment.  Unless Tiger concludes that absolution comes at the depletion of his financial assets and directs them to me (hint hint, Tiger, buddy, pal, I can delete this post at a moment’s notice!), that will remain the case.

Miss Piggy

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Noun: Miss Piggy.  Opinion: Worship.

This is some fucking pig.

That’s what Charlotte would have had to spin on her little web had she met Miss Piggy, a force so inimitable and awe-inspiring that she doesn’t even have a first name and makes the world address her by title.  “Some Fucking Pig.”  I would like to have seen this meeting happen, between two exceptional ladies from the annals of my childhood’s artistic education, though it seems a foregone conclusion that Miss Piggy would have pretended to be afraid, scream, then eaten the over-articulate arachnid.

Well, Charlotte is dead, but thankfully Miss Piggy lives on.  She is currently starring in a video that comes from who knows where (YouTube, birth mother to all things worth wasting life watching) but landed and splattered all over my Facebook homepage.  Yes, she only shows up at the end, but steals the entire fucking show from those other pussy Muppets.  They need to get their headshots in order and polish up their audition routines in the hopes of getting some work way off the Strip, since Miss Piggy is Muppet enough for five universes.

She is also the author of one of my favorite books from childhood/now, Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life.  I guess it was meant to be funny-haha, but I took that shit seriously.  I learned the ways of sporting feather boas and broad-brimmed hats, a habit I will reacquire as soon as I figure out where my family buried them to keep me from bringing shame upon my kin.  She wrote nothing but sense—given the choice between a pastry and an artichoke, for example, she shrewdly advises to opt for the pastry.  It weighs less.  There is no arguing with such impenetrable logic.

Here’s the thing that is so goddamn inspiring about this talking porcine lady.  Her self-assurance goes against all odds—fat (by magazine standards, not Midwestern street fair standards) with oversized nostrils, she has resisted the pressures of her show business environs to own the fuck out of what she has.  As opposed to some.  You know those two pink Mahna Mahna background bitches had work done.  No one has lips like those without the help of a syringe filled with hyaluronic acid.

But enough about those fraudulent hos.  Miss Piggy, in all her zaftig glory, snorting up pastries through her snout then karate-chopping scrawny, emotionally-unavailable frogs into next Wednesday, is a role model for women everywhere.  She’s crazy affected, delusional in her self-confidence, and obliterates the French language like it’s the Parisians who have it wrong.  Yet there is a serenity to her that is enviable and admirable—the zen of self-love and acceptance.  Never do you see her caught up in the tangles of existential angst or driven by the need to validate her being.  Get over yourself, Kermit. It’s not easy being yellow, either (just ask Scooter, diligent and near-sighted, the most Asian of all Muppets).  She glides into a room like the gift to mankind that she is, tossing her flaxen weave, fluttering her fake eyelashes and pronouncing her presence in a singsong voice.  Attention must be paid!  Take THAT, Sam the Eagle!  She has more charisma in one of her eight fingers than you do in your entire bald head!  Try running for office against her and your thinly-veiled Republican ticket will be effing ANNIHILATED in swing states by the margin of the number of closeted trannies who live there!

There is no better source of wisdom than Miss Piggy.  You need a guide to life?  Look no further than to the only Muppet who looks like it could teach you a thing or two in bed.  Bitch is fierce.

Entitled Drunk Bitches Under the Age of 30

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Noun: Entitled Drunk Bitches Under the Age of 30.  Opinion: *Backhand*.

slap-bitch

One of the downsides of the diversity extant in New York City is a populous subspecies of female that roams its streets, wreaking havoc on the peaceful chaos of the metropolis.  They are everywhere, asking for things they don’t deserve, taking things they aren’t entitled to, and breaking the social contract in every which way.  They can be identified by their trendy attire, high-maintenance hair and scent of celebrity-endorsed perfume mixed with stale cosmopolitans.  Their facial expressions are frozen in smug superciliousness; their eyes flash with predatory greed.  Their bodies are well conditioned vessels of failing livers and a raging case of herpes.

They are the embodiments of FUG.  Don’t look too close, lest your eyes burn with the fire of a thousand eclipses.  Don’t stand too close, either, though if you do find yourself scratching your FOPA you won’t be hard-pressed to figure out why.

My visceral disgust for this race makes it hard to write about them.  It is difficult to suppress my hostility for these girls, as the way in which they are bad for the rest of us is tantamount to any dictatorship or demagogue.  I know you think I’m overstating it, but I assert that their impact is profoundly and almost irrevocably destructive—a country will eventually recover from a genocidal maniac at its reigns, but womanhood has yet to heal from the blows these cancerous tumors exact on our reputation.

There are hardly more transparent examples of parental neglect than these bitches.  Given everything they want but attention and love, they’ve grown up in a world filled with avarice and devoid of affection, eventually fulfilling the prophecy of their childhood and becoming adults who want everything and deserve nothing.  Sober they’re barely tolerable; drunkenness only amplifies their features of being loud and grabby.  I should feel sorry for them, but it’s nearly impossible to practice sympathy for those who demand respect while exercising none.

And they are some of the scariest skanks around.  They own a certain razor-sharp intelligence—the kind that doesn’t know where Caracas is but can identify weakness in other humans and how to exploit it for their own purposes.  They are ruthless, reptilian c-bags who have a superhuman ability to extract power and confidence from anything they come across: a designer purse, a dry martini, a warm rock.  I’m sure that when they mate with their rich investment banker husbands they deliver large eggs they cover in sand with their hidden scaly flippers.  Then they flick their tongues out to smell the air for more prey and to navigate their way to Bergdorf’s.

It’s no wonder they always get their way; the rest of us just want to escape their force fields as quickly as possible, to avoid the possibility of getting caught in the shitstream of their arbitrary evil.  So we do whatever they say and make a run for it.  This is an understandable, if self-defeating, strategy.  We only empower these fuckers in the end.  Join the revolution, people!  Let’s fight the good fight!  Not always getting what you want is actually good for you.  Oh, one just shanked me in the throat with her overly made-up eyes, never mind.

I don’t like talking to them because it makes me acknowledge their utterly disagreeable existence, but here’s what I have to say.  There aren’t a whole lot of givens in the universe, but this is one of them: I’m better than you.  I don’t say that because it makes me feel better—it doesn’t—but because it’s a truism of the kind that I don’t usually have the confidence to utter.  I wouldn’t feel right saying that about the lime deposit in my bathtub, for example; it’s a lot better at being residual mineral sediment than I am.  I generally live in a world of relativism and am not easily convinced of absolutes, but this is just one of those things I know in my heart.  I’m pretty damn certain that I am a better member of society, a superior example of womanhood, and a finer specimen of human than you ever will be.

What does this get me?  Not much that you would want.  You’ll be richer, thinner and more successful than me, because you know what the world values and experience no conflict in delivering it at the cost of any personal value system.  What you don’t get is an intimate knowledge of what it’s like to live in a world that is sweet with feeling and passion.  You don’t know how to live life connected with the human condition but filtered through an experience that is richly colored and deeply personal.  You don’t know what it’s like to walk down the street without cats hissing and dogs barking at you.  And once you know this world, one that sparkles and glows with the lights of the heavens even while charred at the edges by the flames of hell, there’s no way anyone would want to live in yours, no matter how filled it may be with material shit you bullied people into giving you.

So fuck off, bitches.  Go drink yourselves into a stupor so you can endure the life you lead of desiccated sex and uninspired pleasures.  The rest of us will be here in this underground cellar, preparing for the revolution.

Roman Polanski

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Noun: Roman Polanski. Opinion: Loogie.

rapist

Roman Polanski, the director of Rosemary’s Baby and generally regarded as one of film’s great creative geniuses, was arrested last month for having sex with a 13 year-old girl in 1977 and then, after consulting the pedophile’s handbook, making a run for it. The crime was committed in the U.S. but the arrest took place in Switzerland, where he has had a home for many years. This will set him up for extradition back to America where tabloids all over the nation are salivating at the thought of recounting the lurid details of the case.

And lurid they are. This is my understanding: in March of 1977, Roman Polanski booked a photo-shoot with the girl at Jack Nicholson’s house, who wasn’t home at the time. He called her mother to tell her they were running late. With the time pressure off (it’s at this point I envision him rubbing his palms together and licking his chops) he gave the girl champagne and Quaaludes and got her naked in the hot tub. (Inappropriate side-note: it’s the hot tub and Quaaludes that put this narrative DECISIVELY in the 70s.) Anyway, Polanski then raped and sodomized the drunk, drugged 13 year-old, although for reasons only known to people who think that 13 year-olds are old enough to know how to wipe their own asses much less make mature decisions on drugs and sex, the rape and sodomy charges were dropped in a plea agreement. The outstanding charge is sex with a minor. Oh, and fleeing the country or something.

BUT! But he’s a GENIUS. And it’s been over 30 years! And that should serve as pepto bismal to the nauseating effects this case has on some of us. So says most of Hollywood—including Martin Scorsese, Harvey Weinstein, Wes Andersen and, for what it’s worth (not much), Woody Allen. France is also in on the debate as Polanski’s primary home and haven, with Bernard-Henri Lévy calling the crime a “youthful error” (he was 44 at the time). He’s not a danger to society, they say, what’s the point of arresting him now, he’s basically served his time. Or something. I would do a better job at explaining the viewpoint of the other side if I understood it, which I DO NOT MOTHERFUCKERS WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING? I’m about to call Obama to press the red button on France and Los Angeles.

Roman Polanski admitted guilt then became a fugitive. Michael Jackson went to trial and was found innocent. Yet if MJ were still alive he’d be subject to incessant mockery while Polanski enjoys the impassioned defense of his peers. What the fuck is going on? Lessee…I’ve a deck of cards here, which one should I play? There’s the race card (black extortion targets < white pedophiles), and the gender card (little girls < little boys), and the plastic surgery card (fake nose < overall fugliness)…Shit, I don’t know. I fold. I don’t know what it is about Polanski that arouses such protective instincts or what it is about his case that allows such sanguine dismissal. This makes the world scarier to me.

There are no winners here. The victim, who has identified herself publicly, has asked the case to be dismissed so she can go on with her life and protect her children from the travesty. The timing is suspect on the part of the legal authorities, who expressed no real urgency to extradite him until the release of a documentary which was favorable to the director and critical of the now-deceased judge who presided over the case before Polanski fled. Polanski himself is a husband, father and at 76 probably doesn’t have the vigor one may need to prevail in prison. No, no one comes out very well in this scenario. But whose fault is that?

If you’re a Polanski defender, the only claim that would seem plausible to me is that he went crazy after the murder of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, by the Manson cult. He went batshit nuts and became a pedophile rapist in response to the absurdity of the universe. It’s a stretch, but it makes more sense to me than the garbage you’re spewing out now. You French are lucky you have Luc Besson to speak reason when there are those of you busy being cheese-eating dipshit monkeys. Besson is a friend of Polanski and calls him “a man whom I love a lot and know a little bit.” Nevertheless, he adds: “But there is one justice, and that should be the same for everyone…I have a daughter, 13 years old. And if she were violated, nothing would be the same, even 30 years later.”

Extroverts

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Noun: Extroverts.  Opinion: Like.

Is vs Es

If you went to either my high school or university, you have taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality assessment test anywhere between three to seventeen trillion times.  The purpose behind the test is…I dunno.  Ostensibly, so that we would understand…something…having to do with wazzit…and apply it to fuckamajig…no.  I really don’t know.  Its original application was to help people determine compatible job functions, but that was never the way we used it.  It allowed for bragging rights (“Andrew Jackson was an ESTJ, too!”) but otherwise was just a way to keep suburban kids off the streets for the thirteen hours or so it took to take the test.  I’m pretty sure somewhere along the way the MBTI test met the zodiac in a bar, got drunk, hooked up, and nine months later out came eHarmony.

There are four different categories the test measures, each representing a dichotomy—no one really remembers what any of them stand for except for the first, which is the Extraversion-Introversion attitude scale.  In college, one professor thought it would be funny to separate the class into sections according to test result and have a West Side Story face-off between the Es and the Is.  When asked what the Es thought of the Is, the most E of all the Es, a plain, graceless girl with a thunderous voice, roared her frustration in trying to draw an I out of his or her shell, and concluded in her resounding bellow that introverts “ARE HARD TO TALK TO.”  When the professor asked the Is for their estimation of Es, after a period of silence, a small voice piped up from the back: “they’re hard to talk to.”

I tend to fall somewhere in the middle, but my inherent sympathies always lean toward introverts.  I concur that they can be very hard to talk to.  Cagey, sensitive, and eternally couching what they say in diplomatic hoo-ha, you have the sense that you are never getting a clear picture of their real opinions or true selves.  Put one of these characters in front of an extrovert, however, and you may understand why; from the introvert’s perspective, conversation with an extrovert is the equivalent to an intense current of verbal diarrhea spewed from a fire hose.  If you ever find yourself inundated in a surging flow of shit, you would hesitate to open your mouth, too (I’ll give you a moment to get over that visual here).  Americans are famously extroverted and deeply unforgiving of introverts as creepy or poorly socialized; this is risibly unfair and just goes to show how being an attention whore can completely deplete you of any sense of nuance or observational acumen.  OH.  KAY.  I admit, that was a pretty broad stroke I just painted (it was the extrovert in me).

Forseriouslythough, some of my favorite people are extroverts.  If you are lucky enough to find someone who pairs his outgoing tendencies with intelligent thoughtfulness, you’ve just met one of the most lovely, agreeable people alive.  His outward energy is tempered by inner reflection, and he is thus about as perfect a companion as exists…he’s fun at parties but context-appropriate, self-aware but generously attentive.  Introverts can’t help but feel wistful in his presence—they can only hope to achieve the kind of emotional bravery that comes so easily to an insightful extrovert.  I’d marry this guy in a heartbeat, but the two I know are both gay (make of that what you will).  He’s kind, he’s friendly, but most importantly, he’s so, so easy to talk to.

Ashley Dupre

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Noun: Ashley Dupre.  Opinion: Indifferent.

Noun credit: Ben.

jackass

Ashley Dupre, the Jersey escort who vaginamated the sense and political career right out of Eliot Spitzer, made news earlier this month by posting a blog entry that called out the women of New York for basically doing the same thing she did, only for a lower published hourly rate.  She takes issue with our hypocrisy, saying that there are those of us who “just love to judge” (Judgmentor note: Ooh!  She’s talking about ME!  Smiley face.).  She exposes the fact that we women like stuff.  And we will “dive into relationships with wealthy guys who [we] don’t love or even find attractive, but [we] stay in it because [we] have a nice home, a car and spending money” (Judgmentor note: I don’t have any of these things.  I am doing something wrong.).  The message is clear, ladies of New York: we’re all hookers!  You, there, with the LV purse—you’re a hooker!  And you, riding in the Lincoln Town Car—you’re a hooker!  And if you live on the Upper East Side—you’re a hooker!  We’re all flash trading our sexual currency for a lavish lifestyle.

I WISH!  God, what I wouldn’t do to be able to disassociate sex from attraction.  And feelings.  And morality.  I would be the biggest slut in the Tri-State area if I didn’t find the vast majority of its residents enormously retarded/repulsive/poor.  Just kidding; I’ve been in committed relationships with dumb, ugly and poor men, I can’t afford to be that picky.  But while I know that women who can exist, I don’t run in the same circles as they do.  The sluts I know tend to be flinty, independent types who hold the anonymous men they sleep with in such contempt that they wouldn’t consider using them for material gain, any more than I would consider eating fried chicken off the sidewalk on Fulton Street.  And I love me some chicken.

I have my own problems with the sex trade, but this is not a post about that.  It’s funny how the most ardent capitalists will ignore market forces when it comes to prostitution.  These people rage against governmental intervention in the availability of fast food as intruding on the rights of consumer choice yet don’t think that market forces apply to the poon trade, wagging their self-righteous fingers at the women who render their services as if they’re pushing booty on the determinedly abstinent.  When there’s no demand, there’s no supply; if there’s no demand, sex suppliers would find other means to support themselves, like getting a job at McDonald’s.  But then we’d be supporting the unhealthy dietary habits of the average American and GAWD why is nothing easy?  Life sucks.

Ashley Dupre, I believe you.  There are materialistic, manipulative and mercenary women out there preying on the rich men of New York.  And these tricks (the suppliers) are giving it up for what they think they need, which is a game women have been playing for all of human history (and they’re better at it than most of us).  But let’s not forget the role of the men (the demand) who sustain this market.  These jokers bring it on themselves.  They target the beautiful because they are superficial.  They aim for the vapid because they are lazy.  They fall for the flirtatious because they are delusional.  Tell me, when you regard yourself in the mirror and see your spongy midsection and supple little waddle, what do you think that broad is with you FOR?  Your charming personali…yeah, no.  Your epic narcissism blinds you to the fact that she’s a terrible conversationalist, she’s a bitch to the chauffeur, and the only thing she reads is Vogue—because all you care about is the fact that she validates your deranged self-image.  You’re just a little too willing to believe that you’re all that.  You’re so rich, don’t you understand how the market works?  You deserve what you get, old chummmm…puh (apologies to Bart Simpson).

As far as I’m concerned, y’all deserve each other.  I think Ashley and Eliot make a fine couple.  And as long as the circle they run in don’t Venn-diagramify with mine (what?  Too math-y?), they can do whatever they want.  As long as it’s not procreate, we have enough assholes and it would be bad for the world.

Poseurs

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Noun: Poseurs.  Opinion: …

Noun credit: Fred.

smirnoffteapartay

…What?

You think you know what I’m going to say about poseurs, don’t you?

You don’t know me.

Well, maybe you do, in which case what’s up, how’ve you been, why haven’t you called, yeah, well, I’ve been really busy, too.  Whatever, I didn’t even notice that my phone wasn’t ringing.  Yeah, I’m, like, too busy to notice.  That’s right.  I’m ballin’, son,  rollin’ with the big stars in big cars, we pull up at the big clubs and sit at the big bars, sippin’ champagne with a  bowl of caviar, hell yeah we are.  Yeah.  We are.  *clear throat*

See what I did there?  Right, I just ripped off Snoop Dogg.   There may be some of you out there who will claim that no matter how mainstream Snoop has become(-izzle), no matter how long it has been since his Crip-and-pimp-and-cocaine-snorting days (hold up, he still does that last one…maybe two?), an Asian chick who grew up in the suburbs and made a living working in a cubicle wearing Ann Taylor prints has NO GODDAMN BUSINESS busting out his rhymes and giving grief to her spell check.  Only thing that would make it worse is if my ass were white.  Then again…no, actually, they’re about the same.  Poseurs of any ass color are fucktards and should go back where they came from.

Calm yourself (you’ve got a little rage dribble right here…no, to my left); I’ll take the hit for now.  I get why some purists get their assholes all buggy by the direction hip-hop has gone; in terms of music, dance and underlying philosophy the movement had its ragged edges softened, its acidic tang sweetened, its bitter pill coated to make it easier to digest in the delicate tummies of the general populace.  Prep-school gangsters swaggered in to feast on the fruits of bling, bitches and booze, prettily dressed up in their twee Hilfiger, long after all the hard work was already done under a hail of bullets, in a fog of crack smoke, and with the heavy burden of societal disfranchisement.  Poseurs in music are no different than those anywhere else and the objections to them are the same everywhere: inauthenticity, no matter how ingratiating, breeds contempt.

Alright, I’m convinced.  Now let’s talk about you.  You fit in, do you?  Every pore of your being oozes with street cred; you live, breathe and eat the very essence of the subculture with which you associate yourself, whether that be goth, Christianity, sports team, or Ivy League pedigree.  You are integrity personified.  You’re not a poseur, not you.  Well, congratufuckingmalations, you old, self-important twat!  You have the honor of being one of the most one-dimensional human beings alive!  Have a drink.

Bitch, please.  You’re not getting any props from me for consistency.  You know what bothers me just as much as poseurs?  Exclusive asshats like you.  Y’all are basically cut from the same fug cloth.  There’s no authenticity (quotey fingers) in buying wholesale into the dogma of some self-classified faction, whether you’re trying to get in or keep other people out.

I mean, I guess it’s cool if you don’t want to do the work of developing your own identity and carving more than one facet into your personality.  I guess it’s alright if you aspire to become a stereotype, never having explored the richness of options latent in the world.  I guess it’s your life and you can live it however the hell you want, and so will I, excuse you while I turn the volume up on this here Jay-Z (SUCK IT, WANKERS).  What?  Rage dribble?  Where?  Did I get it?

Kanye West

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Noun: Kanye West.  Opinion: Bwahahahaha.

Radio City Music Hall

Shit damn!  If the president gets to have an opinion about this, then by all the retired crack pipes on Whitney Houston’s pantry shelf, so do I!  If it’s not beneath Obama, it certainly can’t be beneath the Judgmentor!

For those of you not entirely clued in, we are referring here to the broadcast of MTV’s VMAs (spelled just like it sounds).  Just so we’re clear, this was not the State of the Union, or a speech on the imperatives of universal healthcare, or even an episode of To Catch a Predator, where an untimely interruption could likely have consequences.  This is a C-list award show for videos no one’s ever seen because MTV now only transmits brain-tasering reality shows; people watch the VMAs not to see who wins (no one gives a whore) but to see the prodigiously lip-synced performances.  For my money (I have none), the VMAs yield better moments captured in the collective memory than the Grammys.  There’s a loose-cannon effect to the VMAs; it’s the difference between going to a flute recital at Avery Fisher Hall and the midnight showing of a summer thriller at the Regal E-Walk on 42nd street where the world is piss drunk and vocal about it.  This year’s show was all about MJ, so let’s start with him: who can forget the classic Michael Jackson performance from 1995 that featured Slash, sparkles, wind, and a shot of Lisa-Marie Presley smirking at the camera like she could cut the bitch behind it?  There was also Madonna’s dirty-old-woman Sapphic fantasy in 2003 where she made out with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.  Speaking of Britney, we should all feel bad for laughing (hard) when she stumbled out on stage in her underwear during the 2007 VMAs, deep in the midst of her crazy, lurching about like she forgot people were looking.  These are the moments I remember in soft, sepia-toned tableaux…but don’t ask me who won the Best Androgynous Dance Performance in a Pop Video in 1998, because no one gives a whore.

This year’s moment should have gone to Madonna’s surprisingly tasteful and even more surprisingly well-delivered tribute to Michael Jackson (if she can muster up this kind of sincerity on demand, why can’t the woman act her way out of a paper bag?).  Or maybe it should have been Janet’s brief but energetic dance reenactment of their Scream video, where you could see the lump in her throat for the entire performance.  Instead, this year’s moment was a lot less earnest and a whole lot more high as a kite.  Welcome to the VMAs!

It lasted all of ten seconds.  Some underage country singer won an award, and Kanye West forgot the dictum that NO ONE GIVES A WHORE.  He appears out of nowhere, pinches the mic off her and proclaims that Beyonce had the best video, like, ever in the history of forever and mumbleslurwhere’smyHennessey. Beyonce’s facial expression wants the world to know she had nothing to do with it.  The Internet then proceeded to explode in a pique of sanctimonious umbrage.  Kanye has since been on a full-court press, multi-channel apology campaign for being a douchebag.

Come on, now.  Yeah, it was rude, but it was also funny-absurd, no?  For those of you who missed the memo, Kanye is a douchebag.  But his douchebaggery is that of the court jester—this is the same guy whose blogs are protracted screeds of hyperbolic arrogance, who allegedly volunteered himself to take over as the next “King of Pop,” and put George Bush on blast for not caring about Black people (justified, but sheer nuts nevertheless).  I mean, who the hell can take this guy seriously?  Why is this news?  This is show business, entertainment, the VMAs!  This is the award show that makes the Academy look like the Nobel Peace Prize Committee!  Where the fuck was all this righteous rage when Chris Brown beat the crap out of Rihanna?  What, that shit’s too real for you but God forbid some crunked up trick takes away someone’s airtime on a self-glorified pageant show?  Taylor Swift is young, but she’s old enough to learn this life lesson: let drunken douchebags lie.  And don’t take wee little trophies so damn seriously.

Let’s just drop it now, since Kanye has been duly chastened by our chief executive and deemed a “jackass.”  As for President Obama, I like this new, pithy approach to judgmentorizing.  But maybe he should have reserved it for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad instead.