it's the most whoring-ish time of the year.

I don't have a good track record with holidays. Usually on New Year's Eve, I'm trying so hard to have a good time that something inevitably goes horrifically wrong - one year I was robbed, one year I was stuck in my parent's basement during a blizzard when I was supposed to be on a romantic getaway in the White Mountains, and one year I got stuck playing Trivial Pursuit and drinking two glasses of gross Romanian champagne. I had quite a memorable Thanksgiving when I was sixteen and after an hour of driving around looking for an open restaurant, I had to eat at a dive while my father drunkenly called me a whore in earshot of the entire restaurant. When I was a kid, I would throw up every Christmas Day because I was so excited about getting presents.

Nonetheless, I still love all of those holidays. I get excited about them. One holiday, however, makes my guts churn and my cynicism boil over into open and gross rancor.

Dude, I know exactly how you feel.

Halloween blows. Asshole kids smash your pumpkins and throw eggs and shaving cream at your car. There's a steady stream of brats knocking on your door and asking you for shit. You have to spend ridiculous amounts of money on poorly made pieces of polyester that usually rip before you even make it to whatever stupid Halloween party you're trying to go to. It's going to take you three hours just to get all your makeup off, and no matter what, whatever you chose to wear is weather-inappropriate and has you either sweating or freezing all night.

But the worst part of all? The slutty costume enigma.

If you have a vagina, even if you wear jeans and t-shirts every day, you are expected to wear the shortest, tightest piece of clothing you can find that reflects some theme. The point, I guess is that traditional costumes tend to make women look "unattractive." At least in the beginning, sexified Snow White and the like sort of made sense. The costumes found a way to actually reflect the concept. But the shit now is ridiculous.

Apparently, even the private parts of child-aged cartoon characters can't be left to the imagination.

This is allegedly a beer pong costume. The text on the skirt says "Don't forget to wash your balls!" Let's just make an outfit that says "I'LL SUCK YOUR DICK" and get it over with. Better yet, just get it tattooed on your forehead. America - where subtlety went to die.

"This is a costume, right? I'm wearing one of those cute little top hats!" If you need context to even explain to people that are going to buy it what is actually is, it's fucking terrible.

Sexy lumberjack! REALLY. REALLY. What's next? "Sexy lumper!" Or maybe "Sexy person who delivers my heating oil!"

God forbid a corporation in America NOT take something unique and badass like roller derby and make it into something shallow, sanitary and meaningless. SHE'S NOT EVEN WEARING ROLLERSKATES. I weep.

Here's a tip: Before you design a costume, why don't you do a quick Google search to ensure it doesn't reflect a well-known, relatively fucked up sexual fetish. I feel so sorry for any woman who ignorantly wears this out, because there is definitely going to be some creepy ass guy ejaculating onto her.

Do you know how many people in the world would look good in this costume? Probably about eleven. Do you know how many women are going to wear this and look like a bloated sausage? A number possibly in the thousands. And how is "being a naked woman with sushi strategically placed over my breasts and vulva" a fucking costume? I give up.

I spend pretty much every day trying to look attractive. I just want one day out of the year where I can go without wearing a bra. Which is why my Joan Jett costume this year will be to the top.

I'm even slut-shamed by my cervix.

The horror, the horror.

On Wednesday I have to have a LEEP. If you don't have a cervix, skip to the next paragraph, because I doubt you'll give a shit. Basically, I have precancerous cells, and the next step is to take an electrified loop of wire and shave off a layer of tissue, after which I can't have sex, lift anything heavy, or take a bath for a month. Woohoo!

So I'm reading up on it, and here's what the Wikipedia page has to tell me about how my lifestyle is responsible for this:

"A number of risk factors have been shown to increase a woman's likelihood of developing CIN,^[9] including poor diet, poor personal hygiene, multiple sexual partners, lack of condom use, and cigarette smoking."

Alright, here is where I want to say, fuck you very much, medicine.

Oh, you had sex with a bunch of people? Yeah, it's your own fucking fault that you're well on your way to cancer. You didn't use a condom every time you had sex? Get ready for us to remove a big chunk of your internal tissue. I find it way too convenient that what modern medicine tells us is the best for women is - hmm - EXACTLY what the patriarchy feeds us. Apparently, unless I sleep with one person, live completely sober, and pop out a bunch of babies in my twenties, I am essentially inflicting myself with certain death by terminal illness. I'm sorry, but I think this is fucking bullshit.

And here's the kicker: cervical dysplasia (what I have) is caused by HPV, which I am vaccinated against. So, something's fishy here, right? Here are the options that I'm considering:

1. Gardasil, the HPV vaccine, doesn't work.
2. Doctors are fucking idiots.
3. I have been cursed by a Somalian witch doctor at the behest of my ex-boyfriend who threw a ceramic heart I made him in a river because I dumped him for someone else and he made me a video of pictures of me surrounded by flowers with an accompanying crappy poem and I deleted it off my computer without watching the whole thing and called him a creep. 
4. The changes in my cervix are my version of normal - seeing as I've had cervical cell 'changes' since I was SEVENTEEN - and this is simply a ruse, so they're terrifying me with the C-word so they can get my insurance company to pay for a somewhat expensive, not-very-necessary outpatient procedure.
5. God is really trying to get back at me for saying "Jesus shit" all the time.

Oh, and it goes on, for as long as we ladies shall live. If it's not a Pap smear, it's a hysterectomy. We can't give birth like our bodies were designed to, so we all have to have C-sections.  The medicalization of women's bodies in our culture is both pervasive and perverse. It's a way to reap maximum profits and ensure that reproductive power - the only kind of power that is strictly held by women - is chained down for society's sake.

All I have to say is, whatever painkillers they give me... they better be good enough to make me forget my own name and the fact that I have a vagina at all.

eight songs that make me want to pour hot wax in my ears.

I like to think I have refined taste when it comes to music. Among my friends, I'm usually the one sharing band recommendations, and I've had more than a few people I used to know contact me later and tell me they're still listening to a band I introduced them to. I would make the best rock critic probably ever.

As a whole, I think the music industry sucks ass and the crap they play on the radio could not be worse. But here are eight songs that I really, really abhor.

Katy Perry - California Gurls

 How subtle. I bet your parents are so proud.

It's not that I think Katy Perry is stupid. It's that I think she's a fucking moron. With a fucking terrible voice. This is one of those songs that sticks to your brain matter like that obnoxious residue from when you rip a sticker off too quickly. The song's premise isn't terrible, I guess, except she pretty much desecrated one of the greatest songs ever to be recorded. It features probably the worst Snoop Dogg appearance ever. And lyrics stating "we freak in my Jeep"? 1997 called, they want their lame-ass lingo back.


Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha

There is nothing in the world more heinous than pop groups wearing matching outfits.

Without even getting into how "Pussycat Dolls" is the easily the dumbest name ever, and the fact "Cha" is not even a fucking word, and that I don't even get why there are five broads in this ensemble when only one of them actually sings, this is by far the most phony attempt at female self-empowerment that I've ever heard. Terrible shtick, terrible song. In short, I don't.


Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling

The band is comprised of will.i.am.a.narcissistic.prick, Tabooring, apl.de.ap.iece.of.shit, and the Ferg-monster.

I gotta feelin' that every time I hear the Black Eyed Peas, my entire day is fucking ruined. I can't believe our country is so braindead that they could be sold on a song proclaiming that "tonight's gonna be a good night." Real deep. If you listened really carefully during the moment this song was announced as number one on the Billboard charts, you could hear the sound of classical musicians everywhere dying on the inside. When life imitates art and Idiocracy reflects the state of American affairs, I bet you a million dollars everyone will be listening to the Black Eyed Peas.

I could pretty much make this whole list out of Black Eyed Peas songs, but I won't bore you, and I shudder every time I have to actually type the name of this insufferable, talentless, hideous gang of asshats.  They shall henceforth be known as The Douchebags Who Shall Not Be Named.


Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend

Avril, I think you found your true calling.

Hey! Hey! You! You! Fuck off and die, please.


Ke$ha - Tik Tok

You will never fucking be Cher. Don't even try.

I actually kind of liked this song the first two times I heard it. I thought it was sorta campy. And then I heard it another forty thousand times, and I realized that being continually subjected to that song is the equivalent of being locked in a hot, windowless room with vomit and crap all over the walls. If there truly is a God, he invented that song just to show you that in hell, everyone has a nasal voice, there's way too much glitter, every guy is potentially raping you, they use Jack Daniels instead of toothpaste, and there's a loud-ass clock ticking the seconds away. That's enough to make me into a believer.


Nickelback - How You Remind Me

Nickelback is the worst band in popular music today. I'm not even kidding. The intense popularity of Nickelback epitomizes everything I hate about this country. I would say that I want them to meet their end in a bloody plane crash, but that would seal their martyr status and probably make them even more popular than they already are, so I will request that they split up and order all radio stations and Best Buys to destroy all traces that their music ever existed.


Fall Out Boy - Sugar, We're Goin' Down

There is no way any of these guys had sex in high school.

I can't, for the life of me, understand why teenaged chicks eat stuff like this up. The style of singing is so ridiculously annoying, not to mention completely unintelligible. This is what it sounds like to me:

We goin' dow dow dobeedoobeedoobaaaa
And sugar we gotta down singa
I'll be a numb-er one with a boola
A loaded God complex, caca and pulla


Owl City - Fireflies

I want to punch him in his stupid giant head.

Just admit you completely and totally ripped off The Postal Service, you piece of shit.