What Possessed Me

Just Say NO to Fun

As far as I’m concerned, Halloween is a bullshit holiday. I find the whole costume thing a tiresome chore, and even my best costumes (a lesbian corrections officer, a Freudian slip) were makeshift, ill-conceived and deeply unattractive. So I’ve given it up, and now spend my time snickering at women who use Halloween as an opportunity to slut themselves up with impunity. I’m a sexy police officer! I’m a sexy lunch lady! I’m a sexy plumber! No, you’re not. And please go away.

Several people have criticized me for being unfun about Halloween, and I concede to being crusty and mean-spirited, particularly when it involves people over the age of 22 dressing up in lackluster costumes and vomiting all over Greenwich Village. Perhaps it’s a product of childhood trauma, of my parents pulling together last-minute costume favorites such as “The Henchman” and “The Wife of Bath” while I paced impatiently beside them. Suffice it to say that the other eight year-olds at Public School 87 weren’t up on their Who’s Who of the Canterbury Tales, and so the brilliance of my red tights and wimple were lost on them. “Pearls to swine,” my dad would say, as I removed my red stockings in disgust.

This morning I dressed up as a Disgruntled Corporate Swine, donning my everyday work clothes, and walked through my industrial, bombed-out, godforsaken neighborhood in Queens. On my way to the subway, I noticed a sign on the window of the local bodega:

WE RESPECT OUR COMMUNITY
NO shaving cream
NO eggs
Sold to minors on Halloween

I was shocked to learn that minors could survive and indeed flourish in a toxic waste dump. Since I’ve never seen anyone under the age of 22 in my neighborhood, I just assumed that people had decided against procreation for fear of producing three-headed Chernobyl babies. But there it is – evidence that childhood exists in Long Island City.

But even for me, this sign seems a bit draconian. What’s Halloween without a little good-natured vandalism?


Photograph: The Barbie Murders by Wildemoon via How About Orange

More lederhosen posts, please

I may have mentioned in a previous post that I have a tendency to cyberstalk. Though I specialize in Ex-Boyfriends, I have also tilled the fertile soil of New Girlfriends of Ex-Boyfriends and Boys Who Didn’t Like Me in College. Though this favorite pastime initially fills me with a kind of furtive glee, I am often left feeling burdened with a knowledge best left to Jedi Masters. After all, mere mortals like me struggle to use the knowledge gained from cyberstalking for the forces of good.

When I started blogging, I discovered an unexpected side benefit: guilt-free cyberstalking. Is it not the duty of a responsible blogger to analyze her readership, understand their passions, and gather their demographic data? Is it not, in fact, recommended that a blogger know where her readers come from and how they found her? Why yes, I think it is.

That’s why I have not one but two means of tracking my peeps. Now before you get scared and run away, I want to reassure you that I can’t – for instance – see what filthy, dirty books you order from Amazon or track the items you buy at the Xandria Collection. That’s your business. But I am fascinated – FASCINATED – by the ways in which some of you find me. How on earth did the fella from Bangladesh stumble across my blog? By typing “ass hat” in Google, that’s how.

In examining the list of keywords searches that led people to WPM, I realized that visitors to my site fall into three distinct demographics. I’ve compiled a short list of these keywords, grouped by demographic, in the interests of serving my readership better through understanding.

The kinky sexpot
"Furvert"
"Anal sex w/my mother"
"African licking punani"
"Goiter and colostomy bag sex"
"Anal infatuation"
"Wears diapers during sex"
"Fellacio Papua New Guinea"
"Lederhosen sex"



The spurned lover
"Sophie sucks balls"
"Middle East man whore"
"My wife is shagging someone else"
"Why don’t I have a boyfriend"
"Boy repellent"
"My first lesbian breakup"



The Jerry Springer guest
"Catholic advice fornicating roommate"
"My bf carries a gun"
"Anal sex yes/no"
"I shagged your mom"
"Gods talks to my gun"



And finally, one of the most popular keywords that leads to my blog:

- Asinine

I think that's about right, no?


Photographs from Pictures of Walls

Callooh! Callay!

The wise, wonderful and whimsical Maira Kalman (featured in my last post) just published The Principles of Uncertainty, a collection of her illustrated blog posts for The New York Times. I am salivating as I wait for Amazon to deliver the goods. In the meantime, I fend off impatience by watching this fantastic video of Kalman, in which she discusses her illustration and design work with great humor and irreverence. After viewing this video several times, I am now certain that I harbor an intense female non-sexual crush on Kalman. If I offer to quit my job, will Maira let me clean her paintbrushes?

“I’m trying to figure out two simple things,” she says. “How to live and how to die. Period. That’s all I’m trying to do all day long. And I’m also trying to have some meals and some snacks and yell at my children.”

Is there anything else, really?







Selected illustrations from Kalman's new book, The Principals of Uncertainty.