Miserable Retail Slave

by Ro-Ads

So, its been two weeks since I’ve been with my new place of employment. I cannot say the name, but I shall allude to it.

I basically manage a sex shop. In Detroit.

As I sit here, on my day off, browsing all the lingerie catalogs, ordering for my store, I am thinking. Deciding what story I should start with first.

But instead, I’m going to be lazy. Lazy and a cheat.

So, YOU tell me what YOU want me to tell.

Do you want to know the one about the prostitute and her pimp?

Or how about the one about the man who becomes a female sub (think S&M)?

Maybe it’s the one about the complainer and his complaints about certain dolls?

I know! It just might be about the inebriated white 40-something church-going women and attempting to try on corsets…?

But probably about the DVD regulars and the proper way to approach them, after many mistake attempts.

So tell me. And do it quick, because I need to get this lube order in by five.

by Ro-Ads

Everyone has a memory that exists as their earliest known memory. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Mine? Mine haunts me often.

When I was just a wee little sass, I remember soliciting the wisdom of an elder family member. Climbing up onto her lap, I had to blow my nose. After receiving help as a wee sass would need in doing so, I asked where that came from. That snot. That gooey, salty, tickly, unnerving yuck.

She told me it was my brain leaking out through my nose. Now, armed with this knowledge, I refused to blow my nose. Ever. I was that child running around, dried snot clinging to nasal cavities and upper lips, sniffing the semi-solids back into my head. I didn’t want to be dumb. Didn’t want to be in the differently-abled classes. I had my intelligence clutched firmly, and NOTHING WAS GOING TO STOP ME.

As I grew older, the fear of becoming dumb faded; blowing the mucous from my face became customary. Seeing a box of facial tissue did not incur irrational visions of counting toothpicks or routinely evacuating my bowels into my pants.

Now, as I sit in front of my computer, I have become aware of the mountains of used facial tissue, valleys of snot-filled pieces of toilet paper. I have epiphanied:

My aunt was right.

by Ro-Ads

I’ve been absent for a while. And as I would love to apologize, I realize I really don’t care what you all whisper to yourselves when you check out this site when you should be working. That I really don’t care that you don’t care. Or whatever.

Recently there has been a bit of a trend going on. A sort of bucket list, if you may. And I am participating. Although I have a little less than three years, to go, here it is. 

Ten things I want to do before I turn 30. In no particular order.

1. Go sky-diving. This is just for concrete evidence that I am the most bad-assed bad ass that ever had boobs. Especially since there is plenty of time from leaping out of the plane to landing on the ground for the piss to dry from the skydiving suit and the puke to clear from the glasses.

2. Hear his holiness the Dalai Lama speak words of wisdom. Whether Buddhist or not, this man has much to teach when speaking about humanity and being human. Which we all know isn’t relevant to most meat bags out there. But still. Its good to be reminded how we’re better. That I’M better.

3. Find someone who is willing to hitch their wagon to mine for life’s adventure. I am far from lonely. But it would be nice to grow up some day and have that partner that will get wrinkly and droopy with me, while sitting on the porch and yelling at children while reading Time magazine and drinking tart lemonade. Just saying.

4. Write a book. I’ve started two. Obviously, haven’t finished either; but that’s also why I chose writing a book, not a GOOD one.

5. “Adopt” a child from a third world country. Sure, children are great, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the best parent I can be will be restricted to giving a pittance tucked inside a poorly thought out correspondence wrought with shallow thinking and food stains.

6. Have a job that can not only support me, but give me medical and dental benefits. Last time I had a job with these benefits was when I was a manager at Starbucks & Skechers. For what miracle my dentist performed on my front teeth, I had to promise him I would never get punched in the face again. Since I have broken this promise, it would be wise to have the means to have dental insurance for that next time I literally get my teeth knocked out.

7. Be roller derby girl. Now, I don’t have the most…evenly distributed body weight; and that has haunted me and my balance since I sprouted boobs. Thus, anytime there is anything but rubber separating my feet from the ground, I end up landing with my face on aforementioned ground. Roller Derby wenches have room for that one clumsy one that falls often, while taking all surrounding wenches down with her, right…?

8. Regain my lost musical talent and start a WORTHY band. Shouldn’t really need much of an explanation. I had it, I lost it. It once was, and now it isn’t.

9. Get a boob job. Pick up your jaws; I mean to give some away, not get more. Christ.

10. Learn how to weave my own cloth. When all goes to zombie hell, who will you be looking to for clothing? Wearing animal skin in the summer bodes ill for olfactory senses. Plus it’s just too damn hot.

-Ro-Ads

by Ro-Ads

So, maybe it’s MY turn to type about an essential 90s song of mine. Bandwagon, here I come.

(RFP's Note: Yes, I am a trend setter. I am THAT cool.)

1. I chose "Firestarter" by The Prodigy.
2. The song appeared sometime in the summer of 1997.
3. The magical summer between childhood and high school disappointment.
4. The first time I saw the video on the freshly Comcast-carried MTV2 I fell in love with that English doubla-hawk-and-eyeliner-wearing-pierced-insane-teddybear of a man.
5. There are three members; Liam Howlett (composer/keyboards), Keith Flint (dancer/vocalist), and Maxim Reality (emcee/vocalist). Liam is the nerdy-looking guy, always in the back ground. Keith, the make-up wearing tweaking dual-hawk wearing guy. And Maxim is better known as the token black man who wears random eye-changing contacts.
6. The video was a stark difference from others in its time. Black. White. Dirty. Grainy. Genius. With its star dancing around in a gutter-punk parody of Captain America ’s super suit.
7. Song was simple and driving. The first song I can remember instantly knowing the “singer” was not American.
8. “I'm the trouble starter/punkin' instigator/I'm the fear addicted/a danger illustrated/I'm a firestarter/twisted firestarter” made me think bad things. And want to DO those bad things. And BE those bad things.
9. While I am listing these reasons, the song is repeating in my head. Over. And over.
10. And over again. And I’m okay with it, but my roommates aren’t, as I’m
11. THE SELF INFLICTED, MIND DETONATOR….YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
12. Everyone knows that you’ve not relevant until Weird Al has parodied your song. Which he did. And he called the parody “Bad haircut”.
13. The Sneaker Pimps covered “Firestarter” as a lounge song, and released it on the “Six Underground” single re-release.
14.  Apparently that re-release is rare.
15. I have now watched the video on youtube 23 times. In a row. Instead of writing about it.
16. This song is off of their third album, “Fat of the Land.” Other songs from this album to chart in the US are “Breathe” and “Smack My Bitch Up.”
17. During a performance at the Reading Festival the summer of 1998, apparently The Prodigy and the Beastie Boys had an onstage disagreement over the “Smack My Bitch Up”…the Beastie Boys asked for it to be pulled from their set…saying it could be considered offensive to those who had suffered domestic abuse…
18. Choosing to ignore the Beastie Boys plea, Maxim Reality introduced the song, declaring "They didn’t want us to play this fucking tune. But the way things go, I do what the fuck I want!”
19. That had nothing to do with Firestarter, but I thought it was bad-assed enough to mention.
20. This song inspires nostalgia.
21. The Prodigy is credited, along with Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers, and The Crystal Method as a pioneer of the big beat electronic music
22. I don’t buy it. But they HAVE sold over 20 million records worldwide. So…okay.

- Ro-Ads

RFP says, Take a look at this ridiculousness. Gene Simmons covering "Firestarter"

by Ro-Ads

Today I find myself in Holt, Michigan. Close enough to the state capitol, but far enough to not be as cool as the east side. On the corner of Aurelius and some other street with horrible drivers, sits a gas station straight out of the twilight zone. Resplendent in its rusty, archaic full-serve signs, sit local men spewing chaw juice and remember when’s and haw haws. Here, I crouched, expelling the contents of my intestines, hovering dangerously close to rust-colored water. Listening to the muffled activity taking place just outside this lockless door. It is INDEED a full service station.

To quell my anxiety, I drink in all that surrounds me in this dank box of a room. Wood paneling stretches above me, but seems to become tired and curls upon itself, towards the unlucky soul with angry intestines and too much time. Light filters in through the keyhole, spotlighting the dust mites, the forgotten past, the stink lines. Disappointing yes, the lack of coin prophylactic dispensers, but who really would want these people to partake in the procreation deed?

I hover expertly over the commode, praying to some dead god that my thighs continue to carry the burden, and do not force me to clutch the wall. Whereas I fear touching these walls, I fear touching the floor without an inch of industrial rubber betwixt it and my fragile flesh even more. I wonder aloud, the circusocity I am upholding currently, the hover, the thinking, and the typing of this on my cellular telephonic device. And I am PROUD.

I can hear the gravel complain in a snapcracklepop fashion, compressed under the rubber wheels of steel and sheet metal boxes, as they pull forward to drink the octane drink of power. The creak of the doors opening, the groaning complaints of them closing; so real I can see the rust powder that escapes through the bellies of the beasts.

A moment of epiphany, squatting in this gas station bathroom. I am better than most everyone, and my endeavor is complete. A hand wash, a tub of hand sanitizer, clean clothes and three miles later, I begin to feel like a human again.

-Ro-Ads

I have a vagina.

And all my life, I’ve been pummeled with 'you can be anything, you can do anything, whatever a man can do, blah blah blah...'

Sure, women of our generation have had the opportunity to accomplish whatever we set out to do. We can be doctors, lawyers, teachers, congressmen. We can even fight wars. It has been an arduous journey, sure. Many a uterus-carrier has fought intellectually, physically, emotionally for what we have today.

Let’s briefly chronicle this road these vag-haulers have traveled to get us here… In 1848 the first women’s rights convention took place. Secretly. Then not-so-secretly. The government responds by giving all former slaves the right to vote in 1870. Then, fifty years later, after the prohibition amendment was passed, women were allowed to legally vote.

The fifties were chock-full of Suzy Q. Homemaker and Jane D. Babymaker, beginning their wifely destinies sometimes before even graduating from high school. The sixties proved that women could have a mind of their own, but only if certain controlled substances were readily available.

The eighties. Complete with educated, working women, resplendent in their quarterback shoulders and incorrectly colored nylons. The door opened for female executives, but monetary compensation in comparison to their male equals… Now, we can do anything a man can do, but with certain social stigmas.

We can enroll in the top military academies, but cannot serve on submarines or as navy SEALS. Now, after all that, does it seem like we’ve gotten far at all? But really...I understand its an on-going battle. woman are constantly fighting for equal rights, equal pay, equal opportunities, etc. once we win one, another goal is set.

Ask any neo-feminist. They believe all men are pigs. Whereas it very well may be true, spelling our gender as womyn, wimmin, womin, wymyn, etc. will get nowhere. But hey, if you like stomping around in your birkenstock sandals, camouflaged cargo pants, and your tie-dyed over-sized tshirt, be my guest. It is, after all, what that broad on the dollar coin fought for, right? Our right to be men?

Hell, i enjoy beer, sports, fun, potty humor, cussing like a drunken sailor...but you wont find me blaming men for any negativity we women may receive. In fact, i believe its our fault. I hear a lot about double standards being projected onto women from men. When, in reality, its very much different. we fight for equal rights, but we also bitch about the disappearance of chivalry.

We want to split the dinner bills, we want to drive, we want a job, we want money, we want to be treated as equals. however, we still expect to be courted, romanced. Doors being opened. Flowers being bought. Dinner being paid for. Smelling good and being well-manicured.

So, here is my solution. Instead of bitching and moaning about not being able to eat the cake too, we should just go back into the kitchen and make it. Stay at home and raise the 2.3 kids. Iron and clean all day. Have a three course meal ready and waiting for hubby when he comes home from a tough day at the office.

Times were so simple then. we didn't have to think. Our men did it for us. I’m too lazy to do things for myself sometimes; its amazing that I remember to shower, let alone if I got those TPS reports in on time. Or if I got the memo. Couldn’t I just chase around dust bunnies, bake cookies, watch Jerry Springer re-runs and take up smoking?

So I propose a NEW women's movement...and move it back to the kitchen. Sure, it was a helluva shot, a chance taken, but if we were to create a fun little flow-chart, the flow would go to show it just should have been a no-go.

Hell, we gave equality a shot. We gave it our all. Lets not think of it as a failure...lets think of it as a lesson well learned, and to always remember the mistake, so we shall never be doomed to repeat it again.

-Ro-Ads