Self-definition leads to self-determination. “If athletes define themselves as winners, they are more likely to win. By the same token, if athletes define themselves as losers, they will very likely lose.” (Alex Thio)

I used to speak in “I’m never gonna … ” and “I’ll never be … ” Then one day I realized how self-defeating that is. Of course I’ll never accomplish it unless I believe - truly believe - that I am capable of reaching whatever goal is in mind.

It took a very, very long time to change a lifetime of habits and to beat the “You’re kidding yourself” voice in my head in to submission. (It’s still there, actually, but it sounds like one of the Chipmunks when it talks, so now it just makes me giggle.)

You’re never gonna and you’ll never be until you think otherwise.

The good news is “… research has shown a cheering crowd to be most potent” in a home team win (Alex Thio again).

You want a cheering section? Let’s start with me. But that’s easy … it’s what. I. Do.

You’re the one who has to believe it.

No, I will not dress as a cheerleader. Unless there’s money in it.

The first time I heard the phrase “She brings out my creativity,” it came from a friend’s father. I happened to be at her house when her parents had a full blow-out in the kitchen. Turns out good-old dad had been seeing someone else on the side, a younger woman, someone he ultimately left his wife and family to marry.

“She brings out my creativity.” That’s an outright lie. The younger woman didn’t bring it out, it was there all along; he chose to allow his talents, whatever they were, to be buried within himself. However it happened - over time, due to boredom, because he spent half his life concentrating on his career first - his wife wasn’t to blame for the disappearance of his creative side. The stress of life, of raising kids, perhaps the pressures of business or religion, but not a spouse. After all, what has SHE given up to make your lives together work? What happened to HER creativity?

The very notion struck me as patently ridiculous at the time. It still does.

Flash forward to about 15 or so years ago. I met a lovely couple, the perfect couple, the type you instinctively put on a pedestal and aspire to be when your own relationship matures. My then-husband and I spent a fair portion of our time with them. They were older than we were and had been together much, much longer, so they became our mentors in a lot of ways. We all were open enough with each other to discuss anything - sex, money, religion, politics, philosophy - without feeling like we were out of place or abnormal. They entrusted us with their kids enough we took them on day trips. They shared their secrets with us and we with them.

They were my first glimpse at how well a polyamorous relationship could work, and it did for them. At least for awhile. See, mom kept things casual and on the down low. Dad fell in love with one of his lovers.

To this day, I cast no blame on anyone for any of it. I only mention it because I heard that stupid phrase again during the subsequent break-up of that 20 year marriage: “She brings out my creativity.”

Just stop it.

Your creativity was there the whole time, but YOU chose to allow life to get in the way. It’s a cop-out to blame your spouse for something YOU lost. And I asked myself again: What did she give up for you, dude? Are you blind to not see the changes, the evolution she’s made to help keep your lives happy and together?

Marriage / commitment is constant communication and compromise. Note that here “compromise” does NOT mean giving up anything that makes you happy; it means simply putting something off or working around it for the greater good.

I swore if I ever heard that baggage-filled, mid-life crisis sentence again, “She brings out my creativity,” I would smack the person who said it. (Figuratively, of course. No need to go to jail or court over it.) The lies we tell ourselves, our justifications for our actions, the irresponsibility and refusal to empathize with those closest to us, these things just don’t fly with me anymore.

Call it age, wisdom, or impatience, but I don’t need dishonest people in my life.

And the lies you tell yourself certainly count.

Real honesty? “She brings out my dick.”

Back in the mid-90s, I was in San Francisco for a little event called Mistress Kat’s Fabulous at 50 Fantasy Ball - a charity night to benefit women in the sex industry and anti-censorship groups. Before the show, I talked for a bit with Annie Sprinkle, and at one point I found myself onstage backing up sex worker and sex-positive activist Scarlet Harlot.

At the time, I was blissfully unaware of just who these people were and who else was in the room with me. I just knew it was a girl-powered, lustful night of celebrating sex and beauty in all its forms.

On one hand, it’s a good thing I didn’t know to whom I was speaking, because I wasn’t inclined to have any “fan girl” moments and thereby humiliate myself. On the other hand, I wish I’d known that it was Margot St. James who was hosting me for the night on one of her couches (a scant two years before she ran for the city’s Board of Supervisors) and that it was Carol Queen who invited me to the after party orgy.

Orgy?! You say. Oh, yes, dear reader. I certainly would not ever turn down an invitation to an orgy in San Francisco. It’s akin to saying you don’t want the cannole for dessert in Sicily, nor are you interested in the champagne in France. When in Rome and all that rot.

So off I went with my then business partner, Dolores French. (You know, if you click all these links, you’ll get a glimpse as to just how strange and wonderful my life has been at times.)

I was still in a monogamous marriage and did not participate in anything remotely sexual. I can’t say I regret that decision, because what happened was even better: I got to spend about 30 minutes chatting with Betty Dodson. Of all the people I didn’t know who were at the events that weekend, she was one I did.

Ms. Dodson literally wrote the book on masturbation, titled Sex for One: The Joy of Self-Loving. I still haven’t read the book, but I had heard of it and I knew she was one hell of a speaker, teacher, and feminist.

I was not disappointed. In just that short conversation, I learned more about being an educator and sexually liberal woman than I ever had before. I don’t even remember what we talked about specifically, but I recall taking away from it that I would be a more open and honest person and that I would never turn down the opportunity to teach on topics of safe, sane and consensual sex. I did indeed go on to teach classes on numerous and diverse subjects, but that’s a story for another time.

Why write about all this now? Because I just got the okay from my professor to do my feminism research paper on Ms. Dodson.

This is going to be a hoot!

So I thought my love would be someplace close to Seoul or Busan on this business trip, but it turns out he’s in the far south of the country, in Jinju.

I’m sure he’s bored out of his mind. We are city folk to the core and neither of us likes the outdoors much, so as beautiful as the place may be, I doubt he’s having much fun in his off hours. I wish I were there to help him, but that wasn’t a cost-effective decision this time.

I’m also sure he finds it hard not to laugh every time he gets back to his hotel. I have requested photographic evidence for upload to Engrish.com.

Entertain you to joy and happiness.

There is a new book available titled Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel and Act the Way We Do.

Seems that even adult stepchildren think a stepmother has “stolen” their father from them, which explains the exceedingly bad - and immensely immature - behavior of … well, some adult stepchildren I have known.

My own family hasn’t been immune to reacting in this fashion. As a teen, I was taught to think of a step-parent on my father’s side of the family as an interloper, and certainly not someone worthy of our respect, much less our love. Now that I’m an adult with that thing called “hindsight,” I’m really not so sure that was the case.

Here’s another bit of the Salon article on the book which caught my attention:

… most people’s advice to stepmothers – Be nicer! Think of everything from the kid’s perspective! Suck it up, you chose this! – while understandable from the outside looking in, really, truly doesn’t help. The truth is that many stepmothers work so hard to “be nicer” that they lose their footing in the family and their needs become subordinated to the greater good, often until they feel like ghosts in their own homes.

So if you are or have ever been a Stepmother, my heart goes out to you. Seems like you need all the help you can get. And when the little whiny bitches … er … stepkids … start to get you down, remember that there is a 51% divorce rate, so they may just have stepkids of their own one day.

One day I hope you have a kid just … like … YOU.

In the time-honored joke - covered in the documentary of the same name - The Aristocrats is how comedians honed their prowess among their peers. Each comic would try to out-do (and/or out-gross) the previous and the next teller of the same tale, the one which always began with “A family walks in to a talent agent’s office … ” and ends with “The Aristocrats.”

This is how we, the non-professionals, are doing it now.

Get to it quick, before the retailer figures out what’s going on and pulls the comments entirely.

Damn you wolf shirt. DAMN YOU.

ADDENDUM (MAY 22, 2009): They haven’t pulled the reviews yet … and now there are photos, too. I am saving everything and will pull the best posts and photos for publication here if/when Amazon finally pulls the plug, but perhaps that won’t happen: A cursory search of news items shows the tech media is all over the story and one in particular says that sales of the shirt have increased by 2300%.

I also became the Kwisatz Haderach. With this 3-Wolf T-shirt, the Spice will flow.

ANOTHER ADDENDUM (MAY 22, 2009): [The shirt manufacturer] Mountain promises a Four Wolf Moon T-shirt is coming soon. Whether sales of other products, such as the shirt picturing a dragon wrapped around a tree, or the one showing Native Americans with their faces painted with stars and strips, have skyrocketed too is unclear. (from the L.A. Times online story, here.)

This shirt will get you laid, plain and simple. By your sister.

It is like an illness: the desire to see someone, the strong, deep yearning. Yet you have just seen him, and seeing him tomorrow will not satisfy, and the same illness, like a hunger, will come to you, stronger each time you see him. No, I have not explained it. I was working today, writing. My head was busy: my mind was filled with the work… Read More. Yet all the while I was conscious of a physical pain - a gnawing - as if a piece of me had been cut off. And the mind could do nothing about it. It was physical: it was in the veins, in the blood, in the skin. That is why human relationships are dangerous - because the mind has no power over them.

Anais Nin, September 1930

No one describes it better.

What he said and then some.

Know what happens when you drop a couple of atom bombs on a country?

A little over a half a century later, you get tentacle porn, aerobic exercise videos that teach English (but are only useful if you’re robbed by two men), movies like Ichi the Killer, Funky Forest, and The Happiness of the Katakuris …

… oh, and whatever in bloody hell video game THIS is:

The damage is done … you can’t unsee it now.

In honor of the first Denver meeting of the Black Lodge - which is set for tomorrow night - I give you Return of the Jedi as directed by David Lynch.

Let’s rock.