10.31.07
Posted in politics, sexuality at 9:38 am by Hanne Blank
Dear Closeted Conservatives,
I’ve been holding back from saying anything because really, I have better things to do, but clearly, you need some help. Yes, I mean you, and you and you and you and you.
You need some help because you keep getting yourselves into trouble when really, all you’re trying to do is get your knobs shined. And I agree with you, it’s a free country, and assuming everyone is of legal age and consents, there is nothing at all the matter with wanting to bust a nut.
Nevertheless, this is something that thousands, even millions of people succeed in doing at every hour of the day, every day of the year, without falling on their faces in some egregious stupid way and getting to enjoy a steaming helping of public humiliation in the newspapers.
If they can do it, so can you. Here are some tips to help you get the lovin’ you crave without all the blackmail, arrests, career damage, and public shaming you don’t.
Tip #1: Come out, come out, whatever you are!
Seriously, this is why a lot of people come out of the closet. It’s not because there is some inbuilt queer mandate to share the details of one’s sex life. Coming out, more than anything else, simply makes for accurate perceptions. When folks know you’re queer, they’re not shocked, surprised, offended, or prone to run hooting to the paparrazzi when you turn out to be… queer. All you have to do is belly up to the adult responsibility bar and say “hey, I’m gay” or “hey, I’m bisexual” or even “hey, I’m a horndog and an opportunist and I say any port in a storm.” Really it’s just a matter of honesty. You know, being straightforward and truthful about the things you do and will do, the things you care about, the things you stand for. Or behind, as the case may be, I’m not judgmental. Practice in front of a mirror until you can say “I am queer” without twitching. Then try it at a press conference.
Tip #2: If you can’t be bothered to come out, at least try not to look like you’re an utter jackass and an idiot to boot when you get caught.
Let’s face it, gentlemen. People who suddenly can’t remember that they fucked someone whom they just fucked look like tramps. Stupid tramps. And no, no one is going to buy a roofie sob story when you’re still wearing the trashy polyester lingerie under your suit, li’l buckaroo, so you might as well stand up straight and wear your trashy lingerie with pride. (It worked for Tim Curry.)
People who change their tune when confronted with the fact that they were having, or even merely seeking, sex with someone not their lawfully wedded heterosexual wife look like furtive schoolboys trying to hide the Playboy they shoplifted before the teacher finds out.
People who inexpertly cruise public tearooms expecting not to get busted, then wave their title and office around thinking that it’s going to get them off the hook, look like they have a gigantic entitlement problem, and believe that a title or an office makes them above the law.
People who claim they weren’t behaving in an inappropriately sexual manner when they clearly were, or who claim that they weren’t lying about their sexual lives when they clearly were, just look like lying liars who lie badly. This goes double, maybe quadruple, for anyone who is gonna stand up and say with a straight face that they thought offering someone a blowjob was a good way to avoid getting jumped. Seriously, guys, if you’re gonna lie, learn how to lie like Nixon did. Have some style.
Tip #3: Don’t hold up your wives and children as proof that you’re not queer.
As the unfortunate example of Brit and K-Fed attested, any two people can get married in this country, as long as they are not both of the same biological sex. Hell, you DOMA-sucklers are all about that. But there isn’t a marriage license in the world that’ll spontaneously combust if a queer person puts a signature on it. Furthermore there is no Wasserman test to sniff out any of that evil queerness before the Justice of the Peace will let you say “I do.”
Say it with me, gentlemen: Marriage is not proof of heterosexuality, it is a legal contract.
Similarly, queer people have kids. All the time. They even did it before artificial insemination. Many of them, in fact, did it through the expedient venue of actual legal marriage (see above). Queerness does not in fact create reproductive malfunction. It just means that you may be less likely to procreate by accident.
Repeat after me: Heterosexuals don’t make people. People make people.
For those of us who already know these things, it doesn’t make you look any better when you stand there next to your thin-lipped, grimly present wives, your children beside you barely able to keep themselves from rolling their eyes at being dragged into yet another idiotic photo op on behalf of Daddy’s career. It makes you look like you’re an asshole who disrespects and lies to his family and then shamelessly uses them to bolster his own sagging ratings in the public opinion polls. Remember Tip #1? Yeah. Your family doesn’t like it when you don’t have the cojones to be honest up front, either.
That’s it! Be honest up front, don’t lie and cheat and squirm if you get caught, and stop disrespecting your families. That’s all it takes! See, it really is all about good old fashioned American values after all.
Good luck!
Your friend,
Hanne
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09.03.07
Posted in cooking, domesticity, food, good things at 8:33 pm by Hanne Blank
Today in the Cupcake Factory, we learned something important.
Namely, that when you take a recipe for a layer cake, and you decide to bake up the batter as cupcakes, you may get a whole lot more cupcakes than you were really shooting for.
In this instance, 45 cupcakes, when I was really thinking that 24 would be about right.
So, in the end…
I made 36 cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and glittery rainbow sugar for M to take to work tomorrow for his belated birthday treat to share with his coworkers.
And Malcolm ate one, as quality control, because I’m trying to keep concentrated doses of sugar out of my mouth for the most part because it tends to make me first hyper, then psycho, then feel somewhat ill.
What happened to the other 8?
I dolled them up with extra swirls of buttercream, since I had more than I needed, and sprinkled them with chocolate sprinkles, and took them down the street to my neighbor Erica, who is a single mom who runs her own housecleaning firm and has a toddler to run herd on. She was very happy to get them and demolished one in the time it took her to say thank you and chitchat for a few minutes. I am told that the buttercream is particularly good. I imagine that’s because of a) real butter, b) real vanilla, and c) a touch of almond extract for depth of flavor.
I’m not sure I ever thought I was going to grow up to be the kind of person to sorta randomly take plates of cupcakes down the street to the neighbor’s house, just because, but apparently I have done.
It’s not so bad.
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08.25.07
Posted in arrrrgh, geek at 7:53 am by Hanne Blank
There’s this poor girl who keeps sending email to my spam filter who says that her boyfriend’s penis is so small it keeps slipping out when they have intercourse.
Then today she sent me email saying that her boyfriend’s penis was too large for her mouth, so she can no longer give him oral sex.
Some questions have come to mind:
a) Do you suppose this is in reference to the same man?
b) Do you suppose they’re both really from the same woman? They do have the same name. But different e-mail addresses.
c) Or is the girl two-timing the guy with the small penis?
d) If she is, does he know?
e) If he knows, does he care?
f) Do you think he gets angrier about her two-timing him, or about her disclosing personal information about his genitals to random people on the Internet?
g) If these are two separate men, do you think the second guy believes that the girl is only with him because of his gigantic schlong?
h) If these are two separate men, do you think the first guy believes the girl is only sleeping with the second guy because of his gigantic schlong?
i) Which of these two guys is more likely to be willing to get out of bed early to go down to the corner for bagels and coffee and a newspaper in the morning?
j) Which of these two guys actually pays more attention to the woman’s sexual pleasure? (I am not the only woman of my acquaintance to have perceived that guys with Louisville Slugger-sized whangdoodles often fail to perceive the need to have any actual, y’know, technique.)
k) Has her mother met both of these guys?
i) Which of them was nicer to her mom?
j) Would you call the second email a complaint, or a boast?
k) Do you think the guys who buy penis enlargement products are more afraid of ending up in the first scenario or the second?
l) Do you think the guys who buy penis enlargement products would buy them if there were a realistic chance that using said products would mean they’d never get another blowjob?
m) Do you think the second guy used penis enlargment products, or is he just a ringer brought in for the occasion?
n) Hasn’t anyone told this poor girl about Kegel exercises?
o) Hasn’t anyone told this poor girl that God gave men hands and tongues for a reason?
p) Seriously, most of the women I know (and I know some very highly sexed women) don’t get quite so exercised about the sizes of their partners’ penises, so why is this woman so fixated?
q) Do you think this woman suffers from penis envy?
r) Would it help matters, do you suppose, if they had a threesome?
s) Or would that only make things worse?
t) Did this woman meet either of her two partners through online personal ads?
u) If so, were they on some “adult” personals site, or on a regular one?
v) Did the guys send her dick pix to help her make her choice?
w) Why does this woman feel so compelled to share the details of her personal life with strangers, anyway?
x) And where did she get my e-mail address?
y) Is she related to the bored Russian girl who wants me to go look at her pictures?
z) Is it perhaps the same man, and the same woman, and indeed the same penis, only the woman has an extraordinarily capacious coochie and a preternaturally tiny mouth?
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07.22.07
Posted in cooking, food at 8:53 pm by Hanne Blank
Here is part of what you would have had:
Sockeye salmon steaks au poivre fumé (With my thanks to the glorious Barbara of Neopol Savory Smokery, who made the smoked black pepper! Hi Barbara!). For another view of the salmon steak, click here.
I served the salmon along with with spinach stirfried with ginger and garlic; spears of sweet Japanese cucumber; and jasmine rice.
For dessert:
That’d be fresh, peeled lychee in a bowl of ice, one of the easiest and most delicious finger-food desserts around. (Do it with cherries, too, it’s outrageous. Or tiny sweet plums, like Methleys. Fantastico. For extra points, serve in a big crystal bowl, or if there ain’t no one around but us chickens or you, like me, haven’t got a crystal bowl, any old bowl will do, really.)
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07.12.07
Posted in cooking, culture, domesticity, food, how to at 8:01 am by Hanne Blank
When got back to Maryland on Monday night from Ohio and my mother’s house, I had several of her old cookbooks in tow. I am very happy about this, because I have been sort of hinting to my mom for years now that when she was ready to give up her old cookbooks, I was ready to give them shelf space. Finally, after many years of my hinting, it was time.
I am nowhere near proud enough not to admit that my favorite of these older cookbooks, and the ones I wanted most for her to give me, are the sorta trashy ones. Parent-Teacher Association cookbooks from my grade school, for instance, the kind with recipes for s’mores and play-doh on adjacent pages. A totally cheeseball but fantastico cookbook that is a compilation of recipes from 1970s-era Deep Southern charity, Hadassah, League of Women Voters, and Junior League cookbooks, and which has the hands-down Intergalactic Blue Ribbon best recipe, ever, for hush puppies. (I note that this is also a cookbook in which there are a few recipes which include the instruction “advise your cook” of such-and-so, suggesting that the ladies to whom the recipes were attributed likely did not always actually cook them themselves. O tempora! O mores!)
One of my favorites, maybe my most favorite, is the 1965 Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. I learned to cook many things, particularly cookies, from this cook book, and most of the recipes are still pretty sturdy. It also has some excellent simple recipes for “variety meats,” as organ meats were known back in the day before Fergus Henderson made “nose-to-tail eating” a matter of some preoccupation for foodie trendsters, which could be revived to considerable benefit.
Then again, some of its recipes have not, shall we say, aged well. I present to you:
Bologna-Rice Skillet
(Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book, 1965)
One four-and-five-eighths-ounce package precooked rice (1 1/3 cups)
1/2 pound big Bologna, cut in 1/2-inch cubes (about 1 2/3 cups)
1/2 cup extra-spicy catsup
2/3 cup hot water
One 3-ounce can (2/3 cup) broiled sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
2 Tablespoons chopped green pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons butter
Combine all ingredients in skillet. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, till hot. Cover tightly, reduce heat, an let stand about 5 minutes or till done. Serves 4.
Mmmm, mmm, good, what? To make it up to you, though, here’s one of my favorite recipes from this cookbook from when I was a kid:
Apple Fritters
(Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book, 1965)
1 1/3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 beaten eggs
2/3 cup milk
1 Tablespoon salad oil
3 cups small matchstick strips of apple [emphasis in original]
Sift dry ingredients together. Blend eggs, milk, and salad oil; add dry ingredients all at once and mix until just moistened. Stir in apple strips. Drop from tablespoon into deep hot fat (375 degrees F). Fry until puffy and golden, 3 to 4 minutes; turn once. Drain on paper towels. While warm, sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar. Serve at once. Makes 3 dozen.
For the record, these are kind of addictive, and you should save this recipe to make them in the fall when the first really good firm tart apples come in. I usually add some cinnamon and allspice and a tiny pinch of ground cloves, too. Oh, and substituting soy milk for milk works fine, though I haven’t tried them with egg replacer so I can’t say whether that works.
When I have time, I may root through some of the other cookbooks and share some of the more amusing recipes from those, too.
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