Auto-Fun of Nov. 11th 2008: Like a Kite That Floats So Effortlessly

Intro, The Week to Come: There's this Azure Ray song "November." Every November I listen to it and feel really emo: so we're speeding towards that time of year, to the day that marks that you're not here. This week leaves little time for emo, there's so much going on! ... Rising Star Haviland Stillwell is coming to town, it's Stef's birthday on Wednesday, The Sex Blogger Calendar Release Party is on Friday, and then there's this Saturday's NO ON 8 Rally at NYC's city hall (wanna read my opinion on it again okay here, wanna watch it okay here ). I might even recap South of Nowhere ! Or set up my room! Or put up curtains in the living room!

Also. Also. Also. It's Lozo's birthday today!

Where's Papi?: The L Word Season Six Promo is out! So far Shane's hair seems to be on a good track. Someone's gonna get killed apparently. My money's on Jodi, she'll be like "I never even heard them coming!" Hey-o!

Where's Hedwig? You know who else has a teaser out? The New York Sex Blogger Calendar! We were in Em&Lo's Daily Bedpost, for which I continued my erratic support for this project with a two-line bio I don't remember writing. Holler! 6:30 - 9:30 pm at the White Rabbit on 145 E. Houston between Forsyth and Eldridge. There will be Burlesque performers, free foods, crazy raffles and the first 100 to arrive will get a FREE gift bag from Babeland!! Plus, Semicolon and Haviland are going! The costume of the day is edgy black tie (for us), you can wear what you wish.

Ideas for signs for NO ON 8 Rally:
-Really 52% of Californians? Really?
-Ellen and Portia are HOT
-Hands Down Totes NO
-Give EZGirl the right to marry!
-Don't Leave Carmen De La Pica Morales alone at the altar!

OMG, I'm so clever, I should just be a sign-maker. This holiday season instead of doing t-shirts we will be selling signs.

Advice Column/Riese & Hav Vlog: So Hav and I obviously need to do another advice column vlog while she's in town. Some of you asked questions in August that I'm sure you still want answers to, if you haven't lost faith in us altogether. Askautowin@yahoo.com. Or just comment, but then everyone will know what a fuck-up you are. For the first time in advice column history I am offering you the chance to ask a question and get your answer within about two weeks, which's essentially record time, possibly even an acceptable turnaround time for taking action. Also you can ask us questions that have nothing to do with homosexuality or bisexuality, I promise. Like if you wanna know how to ride your husband's hobby horse, you know, give us a shot. You might be surprised what we know. If I was in the band "an horse," I would feel weird about saying that all the time. "An Horse." I mean it doesn't roll off the tongue. It's certainly no "Bruce Springsteen."

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Auto-Fun:

Quote: "How attractive trouble feels in paradise. The place next door where pain is an option begins to whisper ... a wish to stir the stilled air with a serrated knife ... woo a stranger so you'll not be mutinous alone, to lie down knowingly among the nettles and the thorns." (stephen dunn, "paradise")

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Links:
1. Obamaism: "It's a kind of religion. But one rooted in a deep faith in rationality. Last week, New York rejoiced in its promise. And sang the National Anthem in the streets." (@nymag)
2. When to Work for Free: "No one ever filled a gas tank or bought groceries with exposure." (@nytimes)
3. Foes, a new story by Lorrie Moore! (@the guardian uk)
4. Top Ten Most Irritating Phrases. (@the telegraph)
5. A Rough Night for Gay Obama Supporters: "Around us, the ecstatic volunteers updated the chant. "Yes! We! Did! Yes! We! Did!" When we got home from the celebration, we got the news about Proposition 8. (@salon)
6. Will the White House website work as a social network? (@slate)
7. With Lozo, Sloganx and EV Idiot all recently closing up shop I'm inclined to agree that to some extent ... the blog is dying. (@roughtype) My theory? We're either getting paid for it, or sick of doing it for free. I'm not getting paid for it, I am sick of doing it for free, but there's something else that keeps me here. Maybe it's just all I know at this point. I used to say it was leading into paying gigs, but are there any paying gigs anymore? I dunno. I think I'm determined to get paid by Google AdSense eventually. The Economist says blogging is no longer what it was. (@the economist, obvs)
Only two percent of bloggers can make a living from it. (@mediabistro). Excellent!
8. Socially conscious book buying (@good)
9. My Four Weddings: How Getting Gay Married Became an Olympic Sport for me or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mormons." (@the daily beast)
10. poem. prayers. by rae armantrout (@the new yorker)
11. Lindsay Lohan might be an actual bisexual, not a unicorn. (@afterellen)
12. Little Edie Beale: The Ultimate Recessionista (@jezebel)

[eoin stanley ]

insomnia poem #19

thinking now of a job i could believe in
a job to go to,
even
dress/stand for,
a uniform with a collar & logo
a shirt that smells like wok oil and afterwork
you wear it out 'cause
if it was between you and betty ford
on a desereted one drink island
you'd punch her paunch like red party punch
drunken licky lips and hi-ho all the way home

i'd like to job at edible arrangements.
i believe in pineapple flowers.
btw my heart is half apple, half blood,
bite me i can make a flower from a pineapple.

insomnia poem #20

no use fighting it.
these are my favorite hours of the day
fists full of cookie jar
should be sleeping
feeling out of it
yet still
impossibly, and for no reason at all,
able to write shit down and make poeple look at it.
even if it's just a few people.
like, hey, what's up. it's daytime
in australia.
it's nighttime on the west coast
here we are.
it's no time here in my bed here we are.

auto-alternatively fueled fun of these days 10-16-2008

This is a group shot by stacie joy from the NYC Sex Bloggers Calendar, which you should buy. I am the trannie in the back, channeling Tinkerbell in my Dolly Parton wig. Also! There's Sugarbutch, who's only photographed from behind on her blog as y'all know from when I was lightly flogging her in the lesbian blog contest and possibly also [talking about how i was gonna] make her take me on a date so I could see her from the front. Other ladies in the shoot who I actually knew before I got there include RKB, who edits every erotica anthology ever written, the fabulous Jayme Waxman, Lux Appletreedream from the famous sex panel which was for the book that Dacia wrote. Ta-da!

We're having a launch party on November 14th, which coincidentally is also the 13th anniversary of the worst day of my whole life. Clearly I will be getting very intoxicated. Show up to watch me make an ass of myself. I just wanna show up in someone's recap in words like "someone got really .... jolly! last night! and was dancing on the bar ..."

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Hello autowinners this is tinkerbell. Riese promised to stop talking about the election following her giant election information party yesterday, but then she wanted to write McCain a poem and I do not know what to say for this. If you've not read her election post, you or someone in your family can expect a kiwi in the face within 5-6 business days.

I know you are wondering what me, Tinkerbell, thinks about all this. As the Dog Whisperer can tell you, dogs are very attuned to body language and can read your mind. Therefore I can safely say that John McCain is a bad idea. Onto the Auto-Fun.

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quote:

"Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth, the command of Isaiah -- to "undo the heavy burdens, and [to] let the oppressed go free."

And, if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor -- not a new balance of power, but a new world of law -- where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved.

All this will no be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin."

-John F. Kennedy
Inaugural Address
January 20, 1961

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debate roundup:
salon: McCain loses the last debate
huffington post: final debate - mccain brings up ayers, ACORN
sam stein: say it to each others' faces
robert shrum: put mccain out of his misery
phillip elliot: joe the plumber speaks
ari melber: obama t.k.o.s mccain in last debate
nytimes: live blog - the last tangle
thinkprogress.org: presidential debate live-blogging
wonkette: liveblogging the end of everything, part v

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links:
1. The science of gossip: why we can't help ourselves (@scientific american) (thanks to a.bartelby)
2. Compared to brits, new yorkers are apparently sober mcsobersons. let's put down the drink and just talk. (@the times online)
3. Indie heartthrob interviews cristy c. road, who i've loved and displayed visual love for on this very blog. (@bookslut)

Her answer to "if you were asked to write and illustrate a Sarah Palin biogrpahy, how would it look and where would you start?":

I would start by making sure it's written through a truthful and objective lens as opposed to those of her tyrannical allies. Then, I would make sure I have the freedom to illustrate her agenda through my own lens; thus exposing the inhuman effects her politics would have on society. The lighting in such drawings would be dark and grim. The story will conclude with a classy full color piece showing her severed head inside of a giant condom, encircled by a montage. This montage will illustrate the outcomes (STD's, pregnancies by way of abuse, dead polar bears) of some of her proposed VP policies. Basically, before engaging in such a project, I will ensure the author ties her TRADITIONAL VALUES to such unfortunate circumstances such as GENOCIDE, BLINDNESS, and complete and utter POWERLESSNESS; specifically among the minds/bodies of American women.

I will also make sure to remove that over the top contour from the illustrations of her face. Homegirl needs some assistance at the MAC counter at the mall, dear god.

(@bookslut)
4. The "Wall Street/Main Street" Bug: Curing Symptoms of Synechdoche - "Lately we've heard so much about "Wall Street" and "Main Street" that foreigners might think America comes divided not into states or counties, or red and blue, but boulevards, highways, and the like. Yet lots of very different people have lived at both addresses. Part of figuring out where one stands intellectually amid the financial meltdown of the moment requires absorbing the disparate images and associations we identify with both phrases." (@the chronicle of higher ed)
5. Top Nine Shameless Celebrity Election Videos (@the daily beast)
6. Patient Voices: "How does an eating disorder take over someone’s life? Is it a matter of losing control or trying to seize it? Eight men, women and children tell of their struggles with anorexia, bulimia and other forms of eating disorders." (@nytimes health)
7. Defamer Australia talks to Sia about Tila Tequila, Lindsay Lohan, and Writing Songs with a Certain Pop Star (@defamer)
8. If you want me and Carly to recap South of Nowhere you should know that we like attention and praise. Well, I do. Just saying. The way to a woman's heart is through her stomach and/or the intenret. (@autostraddle)
9. For some reason the emo-cave is not involved in the 10 Historic Secret Rooms and Hidden Passages (@weburbanist) (thanks to big-exit)
10. Why Jews Make More Money and Win More Nobel Prizes (@jewcy)
11. debate preview: batman vs. the penguin (@truthdig)

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[i am rita]
insomnia poem #16
[inspired by john mccain's performance at the third debate]

people are strange fruit
smoke & shoot
but
on the inside people are usually
like oranges
fleshy and sweet
and me: allergic to all of it
but here's the marrow

people are like oranges
except for the people
who are like dates
[hard and chewey]
which i've never eaten really
'cause they are scary to me
like john mccain
the rain in spain
falls mainly on the plain
mccain
i don't think
anyone as rich as you are
can feel

america

it came from
pain

you say potato, i say potato,
you say palin, i say pain

hey you on the tv
here's a fresh slice
of our sweet
dream, like
hope right before
it happens,
and most of us
die still yearning
but yearning sweetly
i mean that it's so sweet
it would make you kiss

it's
like a smile when you mean it
like a feeling when you feel it

and we'll go eyes closed
fuck your pose

i hope you lose.