plaintiff: gwendolyn from detroit, michigan. gwendolyn strolls into the courtroom wearing tight black pinstriped pants topped with a black blazer and crisp white shirt with an enormous collar. also enormous is the strain her heaving bosom is putting on the shirt’s button, which someone in fashion should go to jail for. we’re doing gaping buttons? in the year of our lord 2026?!!?!?! instead of trying to build a rocket to go to mars or wherever somebody should be out here inventing a dress shirt that can comfortably house a fat girl’s titties.

defendant: chantel from detroit, michigan. chantel practically skips into the courtroom outfitted in a corseted (?) white summer dress with an eyelet (?) hem and a stiff cropped bubblegum pink blazer. this is not a good outfit, but she appears to be so thrilled to wear it that by the end of the case i might be convinced otherwise.

the complaint: gwendolyn claims she got a call one night from chantel, who was drunk at a bar and begging to be picked up. gwendolyn says she wishes she’d never responded to the call because chantel eventually drove off with her car while drunk and crashed it into a gas station. she’s suing her former friend for the cost of her car plus impound fees.

what does she want: $2775? what was she driving, a fucking big wheel???

how it went down: gwendolyn says that she and chantel were childhood friends who recently reconnected when chantel called her from the bar and asked her for a ride because she was too drunk to get herself home. wait a minute, what? greg is confused as well and he asks chantel if she and gwendolyn hadn’t spoken since the night in question and chantel says, “that’s not true, your honor. she was the one who called me.” okay fair, but did a decade elapse between the last time you guys talked and the drunk night at the bar? i guess we’ll never know. that said, i’d like to think of myself as the kind of person who would get out of bed to pick up someone i last spoke to in kindergarten who was wasted and stranded at the bar. would i be awake? no! would my ringer be on? also no! but, if i happen to be upright, awake, still clothed, and actively fucking around on my phone you can totally depend on me.

gwendolyn says she wasn’t going to go get chantel at first, but she sounded desperate. she says that when she pulled up to the bar (greg, the king of the D: “what bar?”) chantel was outside, so drunk that she could hardly stand up. chantel says that gwendolyn had actually called her to ask if she knew where she could go to “hook up with a guy for a couple dollars.” the audience full of middle-aged church ladies gasps in horror but like…………so? would “hook up with a guy who just bought her a steak dinner in a nice restaurant” sound better? literally WHAT is the difference??

chantel slurs (is she wasted?) that gewndolyn called her because she “knew [she] was an ex-stripper]” and gwendolyn yells that chantel is a liar and greg interrupts them both to ask if gwendolyn filed this in detroit, at the 36th district where he used to be a judge, before ending up in his courtroom today. gwendolyn nods and says yes, then greg sighs and says, “clearly my former colleagues are trying to punish me.” chantel continues to plead her case saying that she didn’t even have gwendolyn’s number and that when gwendolyn called her to “find somebody to hook up with” she used her government name, which no one in the city of detroit uses, ever. the judge asks, “what do they call you?” and chantel does a little shake of her too-shiny wig and says, smugly, “TANQUERAY.”

fine, i laughed. i also had an emotionally devastating flashback to this night in the early 00s when i took my pants off at a club while fucked up on tanqueray and tonic. i gotta tell y’all that story sometime. the bouncer put me and the nigerian whose tab i was drinking on out in the street, and it took me so long to struggle back into those cheap polyester bell bottoms i’d been wearing because they were sweaty and wet and kept getting bunched up. i was standing at, like, ontario and wells with my entire ass out asking this dude if he wouldn’t mind driving me all the way up to rogers fucking park!!! at 1am on a sunday!!!!!! honestly, considering the similarities in our stories, maybe i should change my fucking name, too.

gwendolyn says that both tanqueray and her unidentified friend got into her car and immediately started arguing with each other as she drove off. sounds like it was just boilerplate drunk arguing: boyfriends, kids, yo mama jokes. gwendolyn says the fighting became physical and they were going at it so bad she had to pull over because she couldn’t see anything in her rearview mirror and she was afraid they were going to cause an accident. a police officer saw all this going down and came over to the car, but gwendolyn says the only reason they didn’t go to jail was because she was sober and dude told her to just get the other girls home safe.

she skipped a part, though. chantel interjects to say that they went to an after hours spot after leaving the first bar, gwendolyn apparently only dressed in a bikini top and booty shorts. she says that she got more intoxicated at that party while gwendolyn looked for someone to bone, and after all that they got back in the car and were stopped by that cop. gwendolyn says that chantel “used the bathroom in [her] car” (please god why didn’t she get specific, some of us would die to know) and after that she pulled into a gas station and told both of them to get the fuck out.

commercial break
-i’m having a lot of fun online playing bootleg pips
-i’m getting really into wraps and burritos lately
-is this a real song? idk but i am obsessed
-every sports doc i’ve watched on netflix is good, including this one about chess
-lowrider stamps??? let me dig out my nice stationery
-jia wrote about the black eyed peas

gwendolyn says she went into the gas station to grab some paper towels to clean up the mess in her car (judge mathis: “paper towels? you shoulda got her some pull ups!”) and when she came back chantel and her friend and the car were gone. gwendolyn says she waited there for forty-five minutes (she assumed that chantel saw the cop again, got scared, and would return to pick her up) until she eventually found someone else to drive her home. she couldn’t get into her house, because ol’ fast and furious had all of her keys, plus gwendolyn’s cell phone was also in the car, so she had to sit on her neighbor’s porch and called her own phone over and over in the hopes that chantel would pick up. HELLO???????

no bullshit, this would jokerfy me. by the time they brought my car back i’d be sitting on my porch in a green wig giggling my ass of while taking a knife to the corners of my mouth, because this is fucking unhinged behavior. after an hour chantel finally picked up gwendolyn’s phone (me, when she answered) and told her they were five minutes away. gwendolyn says she waited seven or eight hours but they never made it.

the ruling: i am going to scream. if this happened to me i would be levitating with rage, especially since michigan is a no fault state so whatever happens to my car is on me??? the next day, after spending the night with her neighbor because oh yeah no car means no fucking house either, gwendolyn calls her friend natasha (here in court today, looking pressed) and they drove around looking for gwendolyn’s car. she figured that maybe chantel et al had maybe pulled over somewhere and passed out, but then they ran into chantel’s nephew and he immediately called his aunt on the phone. chantel answered and got on the phone with gwendolyn, saying, “oh, you didn’t hear? we got into a really bad accident last night and everyone had to be rushed to the hospital.” I WOULD HAVE BLACKED OUT.

okay here’s what happened: chantel was doing ninety down dexter, and when she tried (too late) to stop at a red light she instead crashed into a bus stop. (bad!) the car spun around several times and slid into the gas station. (worse!) then the car burst into flames and she fled the scene, leaving her injured accomplice in the back seat. (worst fucking thing i’ve ever fucking heard on this fucking show!) several bystanders dragged the friend out of the car and away from the scene because they were worried the car was going to explode. i cannot believe this is real life.

the judge asks chantel for her version of events and she flippantly says, “yeah that accident happened” and then goes back to an earlier point in the story when she claims she “paid [gwendolyn’s] way into the after hours spot.” what’s the average cover at a decent club, twenty bucks? i’m gonna say chantel spent no more than ten, because we definitely are not talking about the kind of spot with bathroom attendants and bottle service. is there a universe in which the exchange rate for ten dollars at the door is an exploded car with a human crash test dummy actively dying in the back seat???????

i’m losing it. gwendolyn’s witness stands up to say that gwendolyn was at a party with her and left that party to go pick up chantel. she says the next time she saw her she was picking gwendolyn up to take her to the police station then driving around to see if they could locate her car. the judge is getting visibly bored, and he sighs and points out that chantel has already admitted to crashing the car so let’s move this along. somehow i missed that chantel? is suing gwendolyn??? for harassment????? and that sound you just head was my bottom jaw shattering against my sternum. i’m gonna need to take a beta blocker after this!

“have you stopped drinking yet?” greg asks chantel after she describes gwendolyn’s harassment, which is driving down chantel’s street and knocking on her door one time. we have to wrap this up, i cannot transcribe the legalese of impound and storage fees for a burnt up car because the insane five-year-old inside me who is hyper-fixated on fairness and justice is about to crash out. a $2775 judgment for the plaintiff (of course???) and the gentle suggestion of inpatient rehab for the defendant.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “have you been drinking today, tanqueray? seems like it!”

bangs gavel

a JAMMMMM

a few things i’m considering getting into: balloon pants. daily journaling. washing my face before bed. british crime dramas. knowing rugby players’ names and/or thigh circumferences. calling people “mama.” epistolary novels. watching every alien movie in one day. domino, the kirke sister. dominos, the pizza. dominoes, the game. youtube barbers. costco gasoline. listening. memorizing an album from start to finish. texting people back. trying not to win the “customer the staff likes the most” award at every store i go to. mochi pancakes. being organized. shoes that aren’t ugly. making chopped salads at home. benson boone. having a tequila fresca every night. keeping sunscreen on my person. sending voice notes that are shorter than seven minutes long. learning to draw something. pistachio-based drinks. quietly getting rid of a streaming service to see if anyone notices. vacuuming my car. fiber capsules. thank you cards. knowing a single instrumental jazz album other than kind of blue. exotic vinegars.

i just read this hilarious romance novel pot shot by laura piper lee that was pretty much manufactured in a lab specifically for me: a stoner with crohn’s disease falls in love with her mean ass doctor??? inject it (along with the remicade and also the imuran) into my veins. a few more romances in my TBR: big girl blitz danielle allen (fat black lady); hold me like a grudge celine ong (gay wrestlers); flirting lessons jasmine guillory (black lesbians); the tuxedo society paul rudnick (gay james bond); reel kennedy ryan (fat black lady); thirty love tom vellner (gay tennis); the fastest way to fall denise williams (fat black lady); you should be so lucky cat sebastian (gay baseball).

BRAND NEW SONGS i’m playing on repeat:
jealous lover the rolling stones (my fathers)
voyager pj harvey (my mother)
morning dew (donk) beyoncé (my sister)
just like you jensen mcrae (my daughter)
on wires carly rae jepsen
is it cool? steve lacy & sza
permanently obsessed baby queen
love sensation madonna
am i okay?! durand bernarr (so, so good)
BIG DOG TI

congratulations to the new york knickerbockers and their insane fans, nothing is more fun than watching new yorkers lose their minds in the streets. everybody is so happy! i love watching people be happy!!! i’m not gonna be a bandwagon guy, but i will say that my homegirl elizabeth made shirts and asked if i could help her get one to my other homegirl cynthia knickson and i worked it out, which made me feel like michael clayton or olivia pope or something.

did you know i have a father in law? what a crazy ass sentence. jerry is so nice, he was a teacher and an elementary school principal before he retired and very much still has that “the principal is your princi-pal” energy. he reads a ton (i hope not my books) and writes really long and thoughtful reviews of each book he reads (again, hopefully mine not included), and at his house for father’s day lunch he and i had a spirited conversation about modern indigenous fiction; due to my irrepressible codependency, i decided to send him some of my recent faves (he doesn’t really dig horror, otherwise there would be 500% more stephen graham jones in here) the minute i got home:
there there tommy orange
junk tommy pico
night of the living rez morgan talty
white horse erika t wurth
winter counts david heska wanbli weiden
the only good indians stephen graham jones (what a fucking knockout)

some shit i found when i cleaned my office yesterday:
this tomato lip oil i know i got bullied into buying on instagram
do i remember buying a heart-shaped post it note dispenser? no
“healing ointment”
cheated on my beloved pilot G2s with a box of these
a puffy glasses sleeve with kittens on it
for a minute there i thought i could be a person who is into hydrating facial mists
this book dissection of a murder that i was rabid to get my hands on then immediately misplaced and forgot about
unopened weed lube
whimsically-shaped eyeglass wipes (donut, school bus)
one of these felt and fat confetti plates with some sort of congealed viscous sauce stuck to it
this incredible hypertonic nasal spray i use for my gross rhinitis and post-nasal drip (and for my real sniffers, try the carbonated one)
an unopened pack of pencils made for literal children that i use on my crosswords

i had a pretty intense and revelatory therapy session with my psychiatrist a couple days ago and one thing that sucks, out of the many many things that suck, is that you’re never too old to discover some new rotted thing about yourself and your personality. for the first time in however many years i’ve been talking to her i mentioned this truly devastating end of a friendship from like 25ish years ago? and part of the whole ending of it all (not my choice, obviously) was my listening to a list of things that i’d fucked up, ways in which i proved to be a less than desirable person, and as i was telling the doctor that she was like, “hey, do you think maybe you created this fawning, people-pleasing personality” (a thing i’m supposedly working on) “because you feel like a person you loved and trusted rejected you so you’ve spent your entire adult life trying to be worthy of someone who doesn’t talk to you anymore?” i was gobsmacked, because YES??? and it only took two decades of shoving my head up my ass for someone to help me figure that out!!! all that to say that it never gets better, you can and will continue to find more and more things that are bad and wrong about yourself as long as you live, personal evolution is not real, and i’m about to scam myself into buying a workbook about weathering an identity crisis (is that what this is?) because i’m addicted to the myth.

OLD ASS SONGS i’m playing on repeat:
mixed bizness beck (don’t sleep, this knocks)
scabby head and legs this is the kit (on my writing playlist)
dibujos de mi alma y la bamba (on my stoner playlist)
cool god jack symes (stoner playlist)
run away old man canyon (stoner playlist)
time moves slow badbadnotgood
how to meet yourself hiatus kaiyote
big wheels electric light orchestra
arrow through me wings

pride is over so i’m back to feeling deep lesbian shame for the next eleven months, BUT: my books are bisexual and i forgot to guilt people into buying them during the thirty days they’re feeling the most charitable toward annoying gay people. you know what’s crazy? more people than i will ever meet in my life read what i wrote about being married to this mean-ass lady in my house and my bonehead ass did not take that golden opportunity to peddle my precious, sexy children? a crime actually!

it’s hot, take it easy, here’s an old thing that still really makes me laugh.

limit overlapping interests
this might sound counterintuitive but trust me, it is correct. real conversation from the other night when i foolishly interrupted my lady’s intense, concentrated scrolling with some straight up bullshit:
me “have you seen the tiktok of this diva doing a death drop at his high school graduation?”
her “are you sick in the head? have you seen the invasive plant species that is choking the oak tree next to the compost?”
me (awkward silence)
her (irritated silence)
both (happily return to our separate interests)

befriend their friends but not too too much
i like my lady’s friends, and every time i text one without including her in the thread i feel like i am getting away with something, and that’s how it should feel. those are her people to talk to about how infuriating i am. they are not team me, they are walking encyclopedias of everything i’ve done to piss her off over the last thirteen years, including all the shit that was too minute to bring up to me but not so small that she couldn’t complain about it to someone who doesn’t live with us. fully relax around a friendship cop who has an annotated list of all my marriage crimes? absolutely not!

check the fridge before you instacart so you don’t have to eat six mustards
we don’t grocery shop together because that’s fucking crazy. just imagining the two of us, i don’t know, consulting each other in the middle of the canned goods aisle at meijer? i just burst out laughing. not me sneering at how much cabbage my lady puts in the cart as she attempts to explain to me that zero sugar cool whip also has zero nutritional value! that’s why she goes to the store, and i tip a bored teenager 20% to order [something we probably already have if i would just go look through a goddamn cabinet] on my phone.

if you’re gay put all your stuff in a trust for when they eventually make bumping pussies illegal
the process was so complicated and expensive that i will truly never get divorced because fuck doing all that paperwork in reverse. we had to hire an estate lawyer, a profession i didn’t even know existed until five years ago, and go to her fancy office several times, which i did not like doing. i had to make a will (??) and decide who would inherit my stickers and monster porn. it’s not like we even have a lot to protect, but of course i’m gonna die before my lady and, when i do, imagine her having to fight the federal government to gain custody of my $7.46 warner brothers residual checks because they no longer recognize shared gay assets. my cremains are sprinkled outside of a red lobster just chilling while this bitch is in front of the supreme court asking brett kavanaugh if he knows who miranda hobbes is, ABSURD!!

separate your bank accounts
of course we have one that we share, but that’s not the one i buy my stupid bullshit out of. my lady isn’t even the kind of person who would dig up the receipts like “why did you spend thirty dollars on artisanal incense? that coloring app you like costs nine american dollars every month? do you need to have premium access to the tennis channel? who reads this subscription to the atlantic you pay for?” but i’d still like to make sure she never has the chance. (i signed up for a free trial of the tennis channel like three years ago??? to watch a single coco gauff match and forgot to cancel it and now i can’t figure out how to get out of it, it’s so unnecessarily expensive, see you on the lawn at wimbledon i guess!)

go to bed at different times
one of us likes to get a full night of well-rested sleep (her) and the other likes to stay up until 2am bathed in the cancerous blue light of both the muted television and the phone pressed directly against her eyeballs (not her).

have a real conversation about the temperature at which you maintain your home
I CANNOT BE HOT. we don’t have central air conditioning so that i can “feel a cross breeze” with the windows open, we have it so i can be cold. i spent thirty-six years of my life sweltering in cheap chicago apartments, i have done my penance: please let me live inside a refrigerator in the summertime. if the outside temperature registers above eighty degrees, the windows must be closed and the air must be on, i would love to be able to see my breath while sitting on the toilet!!! in exchange, as a compromise, when it is chilly out i will sacrifice my need to maintain my domicile black people warm (98 degrees F) and wear socks plus multiple sweaters so that my bride can set the thermostat at her preferred sixty-six-degreed caucasian “warmth.” this was in our wedding vows.

get two smaller pizzas instead of trying to agree on one big one
i don’t want fresh corn, i don’t want serrano chiles, i don’t want asparagus, i don’t want roasted cherry tomatoes, i don’t want bacon, i don’t want fig jam, i don’t want buffalo sauce, i don’t want hamburger, i don’t want hot dog (??), i don’t want spinach, i definitely don’t want arugula, i don’t want peas, i don’t want raw onions, i don’t want olives of any variety, i don’t want brussels sprouts, i don’t want prosciutto, i don’t want chives, i don’t want alfredo sauce, i don’t want eggplant, i don’t want avocado, i don’t want fucking pickles, i don’t want fucking beans, i don’t want big ass beefsteak tomato slices, i don’t want almonds, i don’t want pine nuts, i don’t want peanuts, i don’t want literally any kind of nuts, i don’t want clams, i don’t want citrus zest, i don’t want shrimp, i don’t want eggs, i don’t want berries, i don’t want tuna, i don’t want broccoli florets, i don’t want cauliflower florets, i don’t want florets of any freaking kind, what i want is my own pizza.

read different books
the last book my lady read was wards of the state: the long shadow of american foster care by claudia rowe. i just started a book called the cock down the block about a football player who wants to fuck a fat librarian. we do not recommend books to one another, and i think that’s beautiful.

if you have two cars, never be a passenger in the one that you drive
nothing turns me into the secretary of state faster than getting dropped off somewhere in my own car. i don’t even have a nice car; i have a clicking, clanking piece of literal shit whose interior is blanketed in short, coarse chihuahua hairs, but as soon as i’m not the one behind the wheel the grumpy dad who lives inside my head involuntarily says shit like, “took that corner kind of fast, didn’t ya?” and “start braking sooner” and “don’t adjust my mirrors, i finally got em just like i like em” and i gross myself OUT. call me a lyft.

don’t listen too closely when the other person is talking, then they’re always a little mysterious to you
my lady loves repeating herself because i wasn’t paying attention the first two times.

have a suggestion ready when you broach the difficult question “what do you want for dinner?”
i don’t have it in me to go six rounds of “what do you have a taste for?” at seven pm on a weeknight because i will die. i open the negotiation with “do you want a sandwich?” because i’m actually this grandma and i know my lady literally never wants sandwiches as much as i do, but at least i’ve made a suggestion and now the pressure is off me and onto her, where it belongs, because i would eat dog food if it meant we didn’t have to have a whole ass discussion about a lukewarm meal that takes six minutes to eat.

“where should we eat tonight?” is another fucking landmine so come prepared
of the PLACES WE GO, i will be happy to go to any of them. new spots we gotta strategize for in advance; my obsessive compulsive disorder will not allow me to go to a new place without conducting extensive research beforehand, but if we’re going to a place whose menu i’ve already memorized it’s fine, who cares. so, instead of asking where we should go or answering “hmm, i dunno, what do you think?” when she asks me, which is an invitation to initiate a heated crossfire-style debate over every restaurant in southwest michigan, i hit her with the “want to go to rustica? how about saffron? i love the cocktails at principle. we could go to brick and brine if you feel like putting nice pants on? we haven’t been to chinn chinn in a minute. what about bell’s? i love that chopped salad at martini’s. is dog and the bank too far?” or any other place i know i like to go and just let her pick, who cares, talking about restaurants when you’re hungry is the worst.

decide when you’re leaving before you get to the thing
i never leave the house without a plan for exactly when i will be back. oh, the mansbergers’ annual christmas party starts at seven? we will be leaving at eight-thirty. the florence and the machine show is outdoors and an hour away? let’s be in the car and leaving before the encore. we don’t have that couple telepathy, and no matter what i’m doing i always appear to be under duress so communicating that with my face is nearly impossible, so deciding how the night is going to end before it’s even begun is crucial. no one wants to be the freak desperately trying to point to the door with their eyebrows while their clueless partner is being held hostage by her kid’s best friend’s mother’s wasted father-in-law next to the cake table at a birthday party. that freak wants to be at home.

do not share shower or bath products
you never know what kind of little bitch you can be until someone who is not you uses more than a teaspoon of your $$$ body wash.

vacation separately
people hit me up like “hey, how was your trip to [beautiful natural location to which i would never go]? what’s it like?” because my lady posted a picture of herself and her children happily being misted by the spray from a gorgeous waterfall in the upper peninsula and, my brother in christ………….i don’t know? i do not know where the best pulled pork in north carolina is. i also cannot tell you a single freaking thing about the many beautiful hot springs of central florida. i’m not laughing just out of frame at that dusty alpaca farm in arkansas, I AM IN A LUXURY HOTEL IN CHICAGO. i’ll see that lady at home.

only have low-stakes microfights
a mini-fight a day keeps the maxi-fights away!

don’t move shit that isn’t yours
speaking of microfights, one of my favorite ones is “you ‘put away’ that thing i left in a common area that annoyed you, and now that i can’t find it i have no other choice than to purchase another one.” yes, maybe it’s frustrating to you that i left my sweet nike fleece duster on the chair in the dining room that no one ever sits in, BUT: now i have two. brb fucking up two chairs!

gossip a lot
all we do is talk about everybody else’s shit, because we literally don’t do anything worth mentioning to each other. i’m not gonna try to pretend i had an interesting day when the only words i’ve spoken were to the man at trader joe’s who told me the rosemary marcona almonds i was purchasing were a “really solid choice.” occasionally at the end of a day i’ll have something exciting to tell her like, “dan and i went to breakfast at greenhouse this morning” but even then all dan and i did was gossip about other people who aren’t us (i love a best man friend who is a fucking BIRD), so i just pass that gossip right on to my lady in lieu of telling her something she’s already heard me say yet again.

only one of you can get fucked up during a night out
this doesn’t even happen that often but as soon as i see my lady flag the bartender down for her fourth dry white wine of the evening i pop a couple excedrin and immediately switch to water.

know what they want from the drive-thru
i don’t really have a convenient food kind of wife, BUT: i could tell you what she wouldn’t want from any gas station or drive-thru in america, which means i can always find something she would. nothing is more offensive to me than being brought the wrong thing by someone who should really fucking know better.

get some pets so you can always say “hey look at the dog” if you need something to say to the person you’ve been talking to for over thirteen years
i don’t have anything new to say. what is even important to me? i don’t have a job, my lady doesn’t care about collision sports or reality television, and if i ever found myself attempting to losersplain a meme that made me laugh to her i would go lie down on the highway. saying “look, i put shoes on the dog!” is a perfectly acceptable way to break up the dead air between us that my lady might otherwise fill with fantasies about someone more exciting.

one jokester is enough! there is only one clown allowed in this circus, someone has to be the ringmaster!
everyone hates the “funny” couple.

turn the fan and an obnoxiously loud noise machine on when you’re in bed and also do not touch each other if you can help it
here’s how to sleep for ten years with another moody, hot-flashing, night-sweating hormone monster: turn on the overhead fan, and point a tower fan on its highest setting directly at the bed; get in the cool and crisp cotton percale sheets, snuggle in and rub your feet together cricket-style, adjust your adjustable pillow (we were gently pressured into buying these by the charming salesman at mattress firm but they are so good, i should tell yelp), turn on your white noise machine (i absolutely will not live without one), scooch to your opposite bedsides with a clear yet invisible line of demarcation between you, then sleep peacefully for the next 2 to 3 hours max if you are a woman drowning in the depths of perimenopause who can no longer sleep throughout an entire fucking night.

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS
i do not know what this bitch does at work. i don’t know where her job is located; i do know she is a social worker in the public schools and that she does not remove children from their homes, but other than that i don’t know shit else about her occupation or her education (i know she got a master’s degree from the university of chicago but other than that? who can say) or literally anything about her life outside of this house. conversely, she couldn’t begin to tell you how i write a joke or how i put my ideas together or when i’m sitting at my desk writing versus when i’m sitting at my desk anonymously scrolling gay romance subreddits, and she doesn’t read my work until it’s published. neither of us has any idea what the other one does all day, and this is the key to our marriage.

get yourself a trustworthy florist
my florist is named suzi and she owns and operates an heirloom flower farm (a what), and even if i wait until thirty-two minutes before mother’s day (i don’t have human children?? why would i track that) i can enter my credit card into her website and know that she will put together a beautiful arrangement of gorgeous seasonal (??) blooms and leave it at my door, therefore giving me the appearance of a thoughtful spouse who is thoughtful and generous and appreciative and, you know, who really thinks. she does not have to know that i have never in my life considered the color of a flower or its texture or filler greens or what’s in season or what gets paired with what. i don’t want to know what colors are appropriate for an anniversary. i don’t want to know about all the different flower breeds. imagine me?? learning??? what a ranunculus is???? PLEASE. that’s why i have suzi!!!!!! (i don’t ever need flowers, just grab me a twix and some boner pills next time you go to the gas station)

concede first and quickly if it’ll shut down a conversation you don’t want to have
you know when you have a talk that’s not necessarily a fight, but is definitely not a casual chat? like, it’s serious but not deadly serious? i never want to have those, there’s always something stupider and more fun i could be doing. so as soon as i feel a “hey, can i talk to you for a sec?” brewing i’m heading it off at the pass like, “you’re right, i’ll do that, thank you” or “you’re right, i didn’t do that, i apologize” or “you’re right, whatever you want to do about that is fine, you know best” and then the shit is over and i can go back to doing whatever i want to be doing, which is never ever talking about whatever this bullshit is!!!!

#1 on our wedding playlist

happy ten years to my beloved, thank you for letting me continue to do this to you, i apologize for buying more ginger paste without checking to see if the last ginger paste i bought a week ago was all used up, please don’t move my jacket.

book report
-okay over the past couple weeks i have read 7 (!!) of the 8 spicy gay hockey books by tierney rose/michaela grey (i don’t know which one is her actual name) and they’re exceptional. each book features a different couple and their stories are layered and complicated and emotional (i’ve cried at least once while reading each one?) and the action reads like tierney/michaela really knows ball i.e. puck. the first one i read was blindside hit, which i found from googling “gay smut criminally ugly mmc” or some shit like that. i like an attractive man (god if you could see the screenshot folder on my phone) but reading about hot people falling in love gets fucking old after a while. somebody write me a romance book about a person with a physical deformity getting swept off their feet, please! anyway, etienne is hideous (lolll he has a great personality) but hot adam is extremely horny for him but then OH NO adam gets injured, tearjerking ensues, happily ever after. i loved it, and so far i’ve loved them all. A+
-my good pal mary hk choi has a new book called pool house that came out yesterday, and i haven’t read it yet, BUT: i’m an og mary stan, all the way back to her mid-aughts missbehave days, plus i’ve read and loved everything else she’s ever written, so i feel confident in saying i will love this new one an equal amount. it’s like grey gardens but with a gen x mom and a gen z kid in a pool house instead of a dilapidated mansion and that’s the kind of shit i like to read so it gets an A+ in advance. because she’s the coolest she gets to do cool shit to promote her book, including being on freaking subway takes? marry me, kareem! she also did an interview with elle magazine and i have never used liquid eyeliner a day in my life but i read every word of this piece she wrote for the strategist about her quest to find a new one when her holy grail brand was retired. can you tell i really love her a lot?
-i have two active book subscriptions. the first one is from jenny lawson’s nowhere bookshop, from whom i happily receive one nightmare horror book per month. her picks are always insane. unrelated: my #1 horror boyfriend nat cassidy has a new horror collection called i know a place, which i preordered months ago because i do not fucking play about him. he is an A+++ auto-buy author for me, and stephen king likes him. if stephen king said that something i’d written “fucking ruled” i would vomit all down the front of my shirt and then lie down and die!!! my babes at 831 stories have a monthly book club, the ones, where they send you a new 200ish page A+ romance novella every month for twenty bucks. i’ve read all the books they’ve published and was sleeping on the membership (joining things is so stressful) but i finally got on board when i saw there was an upcoming book from my cookbook queen julia!!! turshen!!!!! munch munch munch, yum yum yum.

i had wide awake surgery on my teeth monday morning, and i am now the proud loser of teeth numbers 19 and 20, even though they’d both previously had root canals and at least one of them had to have an apicoectomy i had to pay for out of pocket. i just have shitty fucking teeth. i am forty-six years old and i have the mouth of an appalachian child and that just is what it is. i have every tool, prescription toothpaste, the fanciest waterpik, AND YET: dog teeth. and you know what? i don’t think i’m gonna get implants! part of my rationale is that the two that just got pried from my unyielding jaw had thousands of dollars worth of work done to them, and i still kept getting infections at the root, enough that my dentist finally just tapped out and made me go to a surgeon because he got carpal tunnel from writing me prescriptions for amoxicillin. considering my age, the fact that my mom didn’t have teeth so i am genetically doomed anyway, and also i don’t care that much about anything? if i am gonna have to rob a fucking bank i’d rather do it to spend the money on something more fun than putting titanium screws in my jaw. what am i going to do, worry about being uglier? i’ve already trapped a wife! that’s the cute shit about being married, i wrote “you have to stay with me no matter how many of my teeth end up in the garbage” into my vows so it’s literally against the law for her to leave me over the gaping holes in my gums!

shopping cart
-my face has grown extremely reactive so now i use this green dermatitis balm on it and it’s not better but it’s not worse
-i’m obsessed with these chubby charger cables
-this is where i get the cutie sweetie writing reward stickers i award myself daily for typing literally a single word, work-related or not; i stick them in the same august-to-august planner i have been using since high school (i got the fuschia one for this year)
-malted milk powder so i can make thee best cookie bar i have ever had
-if you are not averse to chemically-enhanced caffeinated water these bang
-in looove with this puffy leopard laptop sleeve even though my computer doesn’t go anywhere except sometimes maybe the dining room?
-big fan of musky smells all year round, and lately i’ve been partial to the kiehl’s original musk spray: it just smells like somebody you wanna climb on top of

i’ve been going back in time and moping to a bunch of old doom and sludge metal records i was into as a sad teenager, and crowbar’s sonic excess in its purest form really fucking holds up. you know how sometimes you get nostalgic for your cool youth and you tap back into something you were into in high school and want to vomit from embarrassment? that did not happen to me. repulsive in its splendid beauty came on and i sat straight up like JESUS CHRIST WAS I COOL. it’s so heavy but also so gorgeous? very proud of young me for being so fucking miserable. i also still have the first system of a down cd and when it got to know i got so hype i almost drove my car full speed into the line of gas pumps at costco. another fun one to scream-sing in the car is crystal ball off of candlemass’ epicus doomicus metallicus album. dig through your cassette tapes and see if you still have melvins houdini and go sit in a dark room and blast hag me as loud as you can stand. teen dusthead acid king. greenthumb bongzilla. eternal idol black sabbath. seeds of the desolate solitude aeturnus. the real thing faith no more. anyway, you get it. all this shit still sounds sooooo good.

a few songs in heavy rotation
12 to 12 sombr i am transfixed by this song, what a fucking BOP
oh boy tank and the bangas the sweetest, dreamiest, most beautiful love song, and boy do i love a slow jam that features a fucking talk box
reckless and arranged ethan french young white dude making robert glasper-esque r&b????????? bet
conceited flo milli flawless hype song
voice inside my head dixie chicks off a zero skips album and while baby hold on is my hands down absolute fave this is a great one for singing in the car
small town talk bobby charles i put on this playlist clairo made of her influences and it was full of songs like this, 1970s am radio easy listening tunes, i love that shit
naranjita manduka another clairo inspirational jam
chapel of pines waxahatchee we saw her and mj lenderman at the masonic temple in detroit a few weeks (?) ago and they played this and it was the most overwhelmingly beautiful song i’d ever heard
coook pardon LVBELC5 a TURKISH RAP BANGER?? man, who knew? understanding 0% booty shaking 100% what a fucking smash!!!!!

love you, talk soon.

Read more

plaintiff: tamisha from chicago, illinois. tamisha shuffles into the courtroom in the strangest way i have ever seen: arms straight down, forearms facing forward, elbows tucked into her sides. one of the commenters said “the plaintiff walked in like her shirt was still on the hanger” and that sound you hear is me falling off my chair. the shirt in question is an embroidered, kelly green, puffy cap sleeved, mandarin collared button-down peplum monstrosity (complimentary) that she has paired with large black circle earrings (circles, not hoops), a black belt over the shirt, and long black skirt. she has a cute sideswept fuckass bob, and in lieu of an accordion of truth™ she has brought with her a single manila file folder. i cannot wait to see what’s in there.

the defendant: jasmine from chicago, illinois. BUXOM BEAUTY!! CURVACEOUS CUTIE!!!!! VOLUPTUOUS VIXEN!!!!!!!! yall know how much i love to see fuck lettuce representation on my favorite afternoon program! jasmine strides into the courtroom and—sorry to be disgusting but she has the most enormous breasts i have ever laid eyes on, and i say this as a person who had a DD bra in preschool. they are impossible not to notice as they bounce freely in her silky low cut top and just like……………..yessir. i love to see a fat bitch with her titties out. verdict in favor of them.

the complaint: tamisha claims she considered jasmine her sister until she got fired from her job and started spending her days finding men online to have sex with, and she’s suing her today for an unpaid loan!

what does she want: $350! i love a low stakes case being litigated for the cost of a tank of gas but i also have enough empty diet pepsi cans in my garage to get her at least that and probably more? i’ll leave a bag of them in the driveway, PULL UP.

how it went down: tamisha says she and jasmine started working together and almost immediately became sister-like best friends. if i had a friend that felt like one of my sisters i would worry. my sister had a mastectomy a week ago that i first heard about in a copypasta she was obviously sending to people she wanted to impress, because she mentioned prayer three separate times and everything was spelled correctly. i sent a screenshot to our other sister (who had a secret stroke we’re all just………pretending didn’t happen?) like “hey dude, did you know about this?” and she texted back “damn, how sad, who is that from?” and i fucking shit myself laughing. YOUR MOTHER’S DAUGHTER??? HELLO??????? my lady’s entire family has a group chat where they send each other recipes and plan vacations and ask about each other’s day, and our sister had her breasts removed and we’re over here scratching our heads like, “who’s number is this?” because none of us talks to each other. it is hilarious and literally insane to be from a fucked up family.

tamisha says that they remained close friends even after jasmine quit, but eventually tamisha started to feel like she was being used. she says that when they would hang out jasmine would ask her to pay for her personal items and jasmine interjects, yelling “that’s a lie! no i did not!” and that’s the kind of sibling relationship i recognize. tamisha says jasmine would expect her parents and anyone she met to lend her money, and greg says, “well, that’s what you do when you’re out of work!” woke socialist king!!!!

tamisha says that jasmine has had seven jobs in the time she’s known her and so what? is your problem that she didn’t work or that she worked too fucking much??? again tamisha tells the judge jasmine had a lot of jobs and jasmine says, “okay, name ‘em.” and guess what tamisha does not do? list even one of the jobs she’s shading jasmine for! greg says, “maybe she’s just industrious?” and tamisha might be doomed because if there’s one thing greg mathis loves, it’s a big girl!!!!!!!

commercial break
here’s a lil rundown of some not-gay-sex books i’ve purchased recently:
honey by imani thompson (bored woman kills bad men)
i will kill your imaginary friend for $200 by robert brockway (loser kills people’s imaginary friends)
fat swim by emma eisenberg (fat short stories)
american fantasy by emma straub (boy band cruise ship)
major gift by tiffany ezuma (altruistic billionaire lady x journalist romance)
ghost town by tom perotta (new!! tom perotta!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
spoiled milk by avery curran (girls’ school gothic horror)

tamisha decides to switch tactics since the “too many jobs” thing doesn’t appear to be going her way. she says that jasmine was online all day searching for guys to have sex with on myspace. “searching for guys? okay, how many guys did i meet on myspace?” jasmine asks. is one of jasmine’s jobs LAWYER because goddamn she’s kinda good at this!!! don’t be out here making baseless claims without proof to back it up!!!!! tamisha says “a lot” and jasmine asks “exactly how many” as greg nods his approval. “maybe she’s just popular?” posits the judge. clearly he wants to motorboat those big naturals. tamisha then says that jasmine used to go to church to pick up men and goddamn is slutshaming really a winning strategy in fake TV court? unless you can sue somebody for fucking your man, what are we even talking about???

jasmine tells tamisha to name the men she slept with at church and i am dead serious when i say i would let her represent me in a court of law. not for any big crimes (we gotta reanimate the corpse of johnnie cochran for that) but i would absolutely let her argue with a judge about why it was okay for me to be driving forty miles an hour in a school zone at eight in the morning. (“your honor, she had to poop.”) greg laughs and says to tamisha, “everything you say about the woman, i think men would appreciate.” yeah babe, why are you here today? was judge judy’s docket too full???

tamisha says that even though jasmine spent all day every day on myspace, she lent her $250 anyway. she says a month later she lent her mom $100, which jasmine loudly interrupts to contest. the judge asks jasmine to tell her side of the story, probably so he can admire her cleavage jiggling while she talks. she agrees with what tamisha said about them being sisters, and i agree as well because i love to cut my sisters off; instead of a DNA test to prove we’re related just lock us all in a room and see if anyone can get a complete sentence out in under an hour. jasmine says she wasn’t on myspace trolling for dick, she was on there keeping in touch with her high school friends and getting laid was just a bonus. tamisha says she can’t believe jasmine would spend all day on the computer instead of looking for a job and jasmine is like, “do you not know that i can search for jobs online? i was multitasking.” everyone in the courtroom claps, and i’m not kidding someone get this woman a full ride scholarship to chicago kent!

jasmine admits that she did borrow $250 from tamisha and says she had every intention of paying her back, but tamisha blocked her and told her not to call her ever again. tamisha says, “well you know where i live” and i get that, but then we’d be in court today watching them argue over whether or not jasmine did actually leave an envelope full of cash outside tamisha’s door that tamisha never found. if i owed someone money there’s no chance i would leave it in the mailbox or under the doormat or whatever tamisha was expecting? that’s just begging for trouble. a few years ago my stepkid went through a horror-movies-on-a-loop-every-day slash channeling lydia deetz dyed-black-hair-and-eyeliner phase, and i bought some scream merch to celebrate and when it was delivered to our old house someone stole it off the steps like five minutes after i got the notification that it was there. but i got lucky because the next morning the package was back on the steps, ripped to shit with the ghostface sweatshirt shoved sloppily back inside. not a big cinephile, i guess!!!!!!!!!

the ruling: tamisha has a witness with her and greg asks what he wants to say. durrel is wearing a khaki sport coat over a seafoam green buttondown and white undershirt, and he says that he is good friends with both tamisha and jasmine. you mean like a…………..brother??? durrel says that jasmine admitted to him that she owes tamisha the money, but she just admitted that to all of us so what is the point of this? maybe the judge just wanted to give him a chance to show off his gorgeous outfit.

jasmine says she shouldn’t be held responsible for the mom of it all, but tamisha argues that the three of them were on the phone and jasmine’s mom told her she would give jasmine the money to give to her. the judge asks tamisha if she has proof that jasmine agreed to accept responsibility for what her mom owed (jasmine says that she never did) and tamisha says she has proof in her folder. she tries to give the judge the folder to sift through but watching a man try to thumb through printed-out myspace messages does not make for compelling television so he tells tamisha to find it herself. she gives him a message that jasmine wrote that has nothing to do with her mom, and greg gets mad and says he wants proof that she agreed to assume her mother’s debt otherwise get this shit outta his face.

she doesn’t have it, so tamisha wins a judgment for $250 and immediately begins to sad-cry. i’m not exactly sure why (maybe to her it feels like losing $100 instead of winning $250?) but this isn’t therapy court so out into the hallway with you both! during the post-case interview tamisha says that she and jasmine can never be friends again, and defense attorney jasmine esquire says, “never, we cannot be friends ever again; you either, durrel,” as tamisha inexplicably continues to openly weep? someone send her down the hall to where they film dr phil!!!

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “she’s industrious, she’s eager, she’s popular, many men desire her, and she doesn’t mind a little freaky deaky every now and then! you’re doing her a favor, her action might shoot up when she leaves here! give her a website and she might get hits every minute!!!”

bangs gavel

if you’re nearby, wednesday may 20 i am gonna be in ann arbor to talk to isaac fitzgerald about his new book american rambler at literati. isaac walked (??) from massachusetts to indiana (???) and wrote a book about it, a book you can buy even if, like me, you wouldn’t drive your fucking car between those two places.

please enjoy this cultured mag interview in which caleb hearon the star of the devil wears prada 2 slay 2 furious says that my gross, sexy, disgusting perverted little books are him in paperback form (aww!) and that “whatever the opposite of a blessing and a gift is, that’s what it is to be sam irby’s friend.” (i love and adore him so much i could freaking scream)

mini podcast roundup: i fell off for a minute but i fear ish and joe budden have recaptured my heart with this one. my babes jennifer romolini and kimberly harrington just started a podcast called no country for old women, which is kind of a for us/by us situation for us withered crones. i do learn a lot from van and rachel on higher learning. grits and eggs, banger. pablo torre finds out, banger. the read, forever and always banging. also leon neyfakh, my number one podcast boyfriend of life, just put out a new one about jerry springer and of course it’s great.

one of the major joys of my life is receiving r eric thomas’ newsletter here for it in the ol’ inbox every other week. i also very much enjoy alynda segarra’s resist psychic death, brain matter by gabriella karefa-johnson for informed fashion advice/information i will never use because i only wear black pajamas, and brit pop, a new newsletter by brittany spanos who used to write for rolling stone. yassir lester is one of the absolute funniest people i actually know irl and he started a substack a month ago, let’s all take this ride together. (he is so stupid, complimentary, i can’t wait to see what this becomes.) i also really like hope rehak’s obsessions this week, which provides exactly what i want from the internet: suggestions of this to read/watch from someone i feel like i would be irl friends with. i can’t do it on my own; i can’t zoom out from the entire internet and decide for myself where my eyeballs and eardrums should go. i need some personalized curation, i need some cutie with specific interests to tell me about things they are enjoying, and i need them delivered into my eyeballs without the bored snark you get from a lot of reviewers and their websites. oh, everything fucking sucks except this one extremely niche thing i had to pay eight dollars to read and spend thirty-seven minutes scrolling to find? fuck y’all.

in that same vein i joined the mr cutts’ chop shop patreon a few weeks ago and it’s my new most favorite thing. he’s an adorable british dude with a lovely accent who puts out an hourlong radio show every week where he stands in front of a record player with a mug of hot tea and tells stories and talks music history and plays excellent tunes. i don’t even remember how i heard about him but i’ve watched and/or listened to most of the available episodes and haven’t encountered a bad one yet. totally worth the five bucks a month or whatever it costs, truly another stellar addition to my “cool people who curate things i’m into” roster.

i’m still watching love story in fits and starts (i’m sorry, it’s the fucking playoffs) and lots of other people have more educated opinions on it than i ever will so you gotta go find one of those if you need critical analysis. to me, it is a gorgeous show that pleasantly washes over my eyeballs and i like it. i like old taxicabs and answering machines and watching beautiful people smoke delicious cigarettes, what can i say. part of caroline’s lore is that she swears by egyptian musk oil, which is yet another thing she and i have in common, the first three being: beauty, grace, and poise. my favorite musk oils that will make people want to nuzzle all into your sweaty neck:
kiehls musk oil (okay, it looks like maybe they don’t make the oil anymore? which is devastating, why can’t i have anything good)
cyklar sex musk
wag’s egyptian musk
kuumba made egyptian musk
nemat vanilla musk and/or egyptian musk
foundling and glow up and nessie the puddle serpent
bargz natural egyptian musk (i have a bottle of this on my person literally at all times)

while we’re here, let’s get into the soundtrack? banger after banger, bop after bop, especially for a 90s teenager currently drowning in midlife nostalgia.
damn i wish i was your lover sophie b hawkins “give me an hour to kiss you / walk through heaven's door i'm sure we don't need no doctor to feel much better / let me in forever and ever and ever and everrrrrrrr”
roads portishead “storm in the morning light / i feel / no more can i say / frozen to myself / i got nobody on my side / and surely that ain't right”
keep on movin’ soul II soul “stay in my life always / yellow is the color of sun rays / i hide myself from no one / know the time will surely come / when you'll be in my life, my life always”
no ordinary love sade “keep trying for you / keep crying for you / keep lying for you / keep flying and i'm falling”
sullen girl fiona apple “all day and all night i wander the halls along the walls / and under my breath i say to myself ‘i need fuel to take flight’”
exit music for a film radiohead “and you can laugh / a spineless laugh / we hope your rules and wisdom choke you / now we are one in everlasting peace / we hope that you choke”
secret madonna god dammit THIS ENTIRE ALBUM. do enough people talk about it? forbidden love! take a bow! love tried to welcome me! bedtime story! inside of me!
it ain’t over til it’s over lenny kravitz “how many times did we give up? but we always worked things out and all my doubts and fears kept me wondering, yeah / if i'd always, always be in love”
set adrift on memory bliss pm dawn “she broke her wishbone and wished for a sign / i told her whispers in my heart were fine / what did she think she could do? / i feel for her, i really do”
you wreck me tom petty while you’re bumping this on the big speakers, i also love: house in the woods! time to move on! it’s good to be king! you don’t know how it feels! wake up time! don’t fade on me!!!

i love big, stupid fucking pants and i have been drooling over these ones ever since instagram fed me an ad for them a few weeks ago. i don’t know, brother: they are Really Freaking Cool but i don’t live the kind of life that justifies one hundred and sixty-eight dollar pants. i go, like, three places? and at two of those i don’t even get out of the fucking car. will report back.

speaking of kinda embarrassing downbad nonsense, melissa and i downloaded the quinn app a couple days ago and are now sharing joint custody of a membership, and let’s talk for one second about how next level audio smut is? love to listen to an old man panting out of the speakers in my car. i wasn’t gonna get the app but then i saw they got shawn hatosy and his big titties to moan and groan while fucking some lady in a kitchen i knew i needed to immediately sign up. we cannot get enough of these. i desperately need some more hunks talking me through it. here’s my wishlist:
henry cavill and ken leung and naveen andrews
will poulter and keith david and mahershala ali
antonio banderas and sam elliott and michael ealy
larenz tate and theo james and the reanimated corpse of jack palance
clive owen and tom hiddleston and morris chestnut
also…………………..KATHLEEN TURNER

some upbeat tunes i’ve been blasting on repeat:
geordie greep holy, holy
gelli haha tiramisu
jungle keep me satisfied
willow wait a minute!
kaytranada feat HER intimidated
avon stringer & jesse rose pressure
n’dambi call me
hayley williams dead horse (hot chip remix)
christine and the queens science fiction

okay babies! goodnight, sleep tight!

WOULD YOU RATHER

…fuck a trump supporter OR eat 27 live bees?
first of all, give me the death penalty instead. BUT, if that option is off the table in this extremely plausible hypothetical situation, where can i buy a confederate flag lingerie set i guess!

…be beaten to death by a gorilla OR eaten by a great white shark?
i really had to think about this one? like, both are fucking horrible, but at least if i let titus stomp me out i wouldn’t also have to drown while suffering a horrifically violent and bloody death?????

…sneeze fish OR throw up out of your eyeballs?
babe i’m sneezing smelts, then i am seasoning and battering those smelts before frying them in avocado oil and stuffing them into my body with lemons and tartar sauce until i throw up the regular way.

…fight 10,000 spider-sized lions OR 1 lion-sized spider?
one lion-sized spider. ten thousand is just so fucking many. it would be so exhausting to fight ten thousand of anything. what if you had to deal with ten thousand feathers? or ten thousand pieces of glitter? forget it. let that big boy have me.

…have birds be sexually attracted to you and no one knows OR be sexually attracted to birds and everyone knows?
animal people are crazy as hell and i do not want to be in their crosshairs. also, imagine going to prison for bestiality and everybody’s all excited waiting to hear how you got railed by a donkey and then you have to admit to your fellow inmates that your freaky ass couldn’t stop fucking birds. i’d rather be shanked.

…eat with your butt OR poop from your mouth?
i suspect i’m in the minority here but i would definitely poop from my mouth? at least i could do that in private?? how do i take my buttmouth to a restaurant where other people are eating? what does that look like, me tugging down my elasticized waistband and high-rise 100% cotton briefs (ethically sourced) to, what, hover my raw ass over the table to vacuum up my spaghetti? absolutely not, i will keep a toothbrush and a can of comet in my bag at all times and go on living my life!

…shit yourself every time you get sexually aroused OR say [the forbidden word] randomly in 3% of conversations for the rest of your life?
as a semi-pro pants-shitter on a high dose of libido-torpedoing brain medicines who also happens to be menopausal and repulsed by the human touch, option one doesn’t really scare me. oh no, i’m gonna shit myself once every nine months after two hours of intense concentration? on the other hand, is three really that many percents…………..?

…watch your parents have sex every single day OR join once to stop it?
someone should kill me because i would walk in the room with zero hesitation, jerk my dad off one good time, then go on with the rest of my life pretending it never happened. i gotta watch my mother do doggystyle every single day? every single fucking day? what if it’s always at the same time, like a job or the news, like “sorry can’t hang, babes, gotta go clock in for my shift at the my mom riding my dad factory?” or, worse, what if the viewings happen at random and you know you’re gonna have to witness your dad railing your mom at some point every! goddamn! day! of your miserable existence, but you have to walk around with a dark cloud of dread looming over you because you have no idea when you’re going to turn a corner and accidentally trip over your dad’s dick? absolutely the fuck not, i’m tongue kissing my mom then immediately calling my psychiatrist.

FUCK / MARRY / KILL

judge mathis / judge judy / judge reinhold
fuck judge reinhold i’m sorry, BUT: have you seen beverly hills cop?
marry judge mathis: you already knew i was going to say this but i guess it’s good to officially enter it into the public record.
kill judge judy: sorry if this is anti-feminist but come on now, that voice? imagine her yelling across the house reminding you to switch the laundry! or wondering why you haven’t paid the water bill yet!! or commanding you to eat her ass!!!!!

godzilla / king kong / bigfoot
fuck king kong: don’t make me say it
marry godzilla: the money we’d save on electricity alone!!!!
kill bigfoot: eeee-yuck!

ALF / ET / robin williams as mork
fuck ET: that finger???? HELLO??????????????
marry robin williams as mork: i love having fun!
kill ALF: i’m a cat lady i mean let’s be serious!!

vitamin D / vitamin C / vitamin B12
fuck vitamin C: i’m not sure if it does anything for my immune system but the emergen-c fizzy raspberry is good as hell!
marry vitamin D: as a black person with depression i have been taking vitamin D since i was a wee lass. am i happy? no. is it demonstrably benefitting me in other ways? also no.
kill vitamin b12: last year i had to start going to a hematologist because my iron was dangerously low (if i ever write another book i’ll tell you why) and i told him i was taking sublingual b12 from the grocery store and when he recovered from falling on the ground in hysterical laughter he sent me home with a bunch of needles i had to use to pump red kool-aid directly into my leg muscles; when that didn’t work i started getting weekly iron infusions and i’m better now but fuck this shit! (in the bad way)

NBA ja(y)lens: jalen green / jaylen brown / jalen rose
fuck jaylen brown: his skin glows, his smile is beautiful, overall he is so gorgeous? and i find the hair dye thing endearing!
marry jalen rose: as a michigander with no collegiate allegiance i am contractually bound to say this but also i’m from chicago and he’s always been perfect i love him for real.
kill jalen green: i am truly sorry, young chicken wing.

instagram / tiktok / reddit
fuck tiktok: i am a late adopter (beat it, old) but that algorithm knows me better than my own family and never, ever fails to delight.
marry reddit: i’ve learned more from reddit than i did from high school
kill instagram: i actually love instagram? and have a great time shitposting on it?? but i’d get back, like, two extra hours in my day at least. i had to set a timer on it to rein myself in!!

ronald mcdonald / grimace / mayor mccheese
fuck grimace: gimme that chunky, creamy mcflurry big daddy.
marry mayor mccheese: i am a sucker for a good-looking, powerful, well-connected politician.
kill ronald mcdonald: i’m not letting him get that nasty greasepaint all over my fucking house? imagine snaking clumps of that stringy nylon hair out of the shower drain!

influenza / measles / covid-19
fuck measles: i’m vaccinated, so is this a real problem?
marry influenza: i’m vaccinated, so is this a real problem?
kill covid-19: i still get vaccinated against this too because you know it’s still around, right? and maybe the reason everyone is so fucked up and brain damaged and inexplicably dying from weird shit at age thirty-seven?? i would love for this shit to go away! for good measure why don’t we just rewind the clock to 2018 and fucking stay there forever.

WOULD YOU RATHER

…be drowned in a deep fryer OR go feet first into a wood chipper?
to me the scariest thing about dying is the possibility that my brain, the best and most useful of all my organs, will be the last to go and i will be painfully aware of what is happening to me as it happens. like, i do not want to have thoughts as i am dying, and i’d prefer my brain to be cooked like a donut rather than awkwardly attempting a comedy bit watching as my toes and feet slowly get ripped apart by sharp blades. “hey, i’m walkin’ here! up yours!” (flopsweats as calves get shredded like a head of lettuce)

…pee a little every time you laugh OR fly a little every time you fart?
I AM ALMOST FIFTY YEARS OLD, what pelvic floor?

…mama bird your least favorite food into a stranger’s mouth OR have a stranger baby bird your favorite food into yours?
i’m sorry but i simply cannot be spit into. i hate raw coconut i hate truffle oil i hate beets i hate oysters i hate grapefruit i hate olives i hate chitlins i hate matcha i hate eggplant i hate radishes i hate jello but i would happily fill my mouth with any of them and expectorate the chewed-up mush down a stranger’s throat, even at the risk of some of the juice or slime breaching my own throat, than have something delicious spit down mine. spitting is so fucking crazy. if you spit on me you have to die.

…be an antivaxxer OR a jehovah’s witness?
maybe it’s just because i’ve been fat in america my whole life but i could not give less of a fuck what anyone chooses to put in their body. i don’t fucking care, do whatever you want. i like to put hotdogs in mine, whatever goes in yours is none of my concern. cancel christmas, praise yahweh.

…physically fight a dog for every meal OR every meal tastes like lukewarm tap water?
tough question to ask a person like me, who has a hateful, stinky little gremlin dog from whose jaws i have to wrestle my dinner every night. he really thinks he’s a person, busting in the kitchen talking about, “oh, we’re having halal cart chicken tonight? let me grab my bib!” he doesn’t even drink tap water, we bought some futuristic-looking fountain that starts trickling crisp, refreshing filtered water when it senses he’s nearby. i would fistfight him for that.

…have a horizontal butt crack OR a vertical mouth?
horizontal butt crack. especially if i don’t have to show it to anyone other than my gastroenterologist, who legally can’t make fun of me for it.

…swim through the sewage system of a large city butt naked OR publish your entire internet history (including incognito, deleted, etc)?
i’ve been hospitalized with e.coli before and it was a waking nightmare so i’m just gonna have to let the world see that i once watched a porn where two dudes fucked each other dressed as kittens.

…have a vagina on your forehead OR a line of penises down your back like a stegosaurus?
forehead vagina. even if it’s hairy. even if it gets yeast infections. EVEN IF IT BLEEDS.

FUCK / MARRY / KILL

kenny smith / shaquille o’neal / charles barkley
fuck shaquille o’neal: mostly because i need to be married for the rest of my life to charles barkley.
marry charles barkley: no one is unintentionally funnier, no one gives fewer fucks, no one is sweeter.
kill kenny smith: i’m sorry, jet!

catfish episodes edition: craig and zoe / the tony voice i.e. fatass kelly price / that crazy white guy in the park?
fuck craig and zoe: he’s such an angel!! also, fun fact, the favicon on my stupid, useless website (don’t look at it, who cares) is craig in tears! my sweetie!!!
marry fatass kelly price: are you fucking kidding, she is my spiritual wife!
kill the park guy: this weird loser simply cannot continue to live

mitch mcconnell / steve bannon / tucker carlson
fuck tucker carlson: this version though
marry mitch mcconnell: to get in the will, DUH
kill steve bannon: would they even put me in jail???

ice cube / ice t / vanilla ice
fuck ice t: dressed in his outfit from the player hater’s ball or as scotty appleton
marry ice cube: i can rap death certificate in its entirety and i would love to show him
kill vanilla ice: but it would pain me, i’ve probably listened to his teenage mutant ninja turtles rap a thousand times.

vomiting / diarrhea / having a fever
fuck vomiting: an occasional puke? i’ll survive
marry diarrhea: i am already married to diarrhea! i have been married to diarrhea for my entire adult life! our vow renewal is next week, see you there?
kill having a fever: to me nothing is worse than that feeling you get when you have a fever, when your body is sensitive to the touch and feeling boiled and crazy, your brain is melting, you’re cold but then you’re hot but then you’re cold but then you’re hot. the imaginary one i’m conjuring right now is stressing me out and it’s not even real!

batman villains edition: the joker, r’as al ghul, bane as played by tom hardy
fuck r’as al ghul: i enjoy a severe older gentleman with artfully-styled facial hair.
marry bane as played by tom hardy: him bossing me around in that voice???
kill the joker: girl, i’m not dealing with this bullshit.

cell phone / computer / TV
fuck cell phone: i do not know anyone’s phone number, i do not know how to get anywhere, i do not know where the upcoming waxahatchee show i bought tickets for is, i do not know what other device i could listen to a podcast on, i do not want to travel without my two different white noise machine apps, i do not want to use the CD player in my stupid old car, i do not know when my next psychiatric appointment is, i do not know if you can use doordash on a desktop, and i do not want to find any of these things out on my own. i want my fucking phone.
marry TV: have you guys watched the new season of jury duty? it’s so great, i wish they would’ve given anthony a million dollars. do you think he’ll have gnarly trust issues after this experience? real truman show shit, BUT: that gentleman is a delight. drag race feels like it’s on some fucking bullshit this season, because how the fuck is it correct that my diva jane don’t is not the fucking winner? in what fucking world? do you guys think production rigged it so she can come back and kill all stars? even if they did i’m so annoyed. team darlene, i guess? i started watching marshals because i desperately miss adam karma and you know what? it’s a perfectly fine show. it fits the yellowstone-sized hole in my watchlist like a glove. we started something bad is going to happen and the bad thing that happened was watching that show. i can’t believe there’s only one episode left of the pitt, and did you know young people who use capcut have been shipping king and langdon? they call them kingdon????? I MISS ERIC TAO. stoked that monarch legacy of monsters is finally back, stoked that baseball is back, stoked to watch wemby in the nba playoffs. sporadically rewatching ozark, rewatching veep, did a podcast interview last week in which i panicked and said my favorite comfort show is the diplomat??? i’m not sure that’s actually true. i finally tapped into survivor 50 and here’s a sexy take: i would fuck marry and kill coach. i’m in love with him, i think. i’m watching that new padma culinary cup show and i like it but i wish she’d just go back top chef. the format of the show feels v sterile and uncanny valley. that said, i’m thrilled to have buddha and beverly back on my screen. abbott elementary remains excellent. i’ve watched three and a half episodes of love story and my main takeaway is darryl hannah has to sue these fucking people, right? i would be on ryan murphy’s doorstep with a weapon!!!!!
kill computer: boo hoo writing career, who gives a fuck, i am not one of those people who can watch an entire movie on the laptop second-degree burning a hole on the surface of my thighs.

heated rivalry edition: shane hollander / ilya rozanov / scott hunter
fuck ilya: has there ever been a fictional character more made for sex? i would let him hit me with a car.
marry scott hunter: excuse me, but that is A MAN. he is A GROWNUP. he is A HUSBAND. he likes FRUIT. he has his own TUXEDO. he is A CARETAKER. he donates money to ORPHANS. he is A PROVIDER. he is SEXY. he has A NICE APARTMENT THAT IS CLEAN. he uses a CAR SERVICE. he is HANDSOME. his beard is KEMPT. his refrigerator is ORGANIZED. he gets excited about homemade PASTA SALAD. he is FORTY-FIVE YEARS OLD. he is LONELY and i could HEAL THAT. he is interested in buying ART. he is not afraid to be CRINGE. he is ready to be IN LOVE. he looks great in a TIGHT BLOUSE. he is my DADA.
kill shane: i’m sorry but there is only room for one mentally ill babygirl in this relationship and that girl has to be me.

WOULD YOU RATHER

…use sandpaper as a washcloth OR saran wrap as toilet paper?
i feel like if anyone could, i could make the saran wrap work? honestly, what’s the difference between saran wrap and the 1-ply bullshit found in most public restrooms?

…wake up during surgery OR witness a murder?
if someone was murdered in front of me i feel like i would think about it every day for the rest of my life. i woke up during a sedated colonoscopy once, how much worse could it be to lie awake watching (and listening to) a surgeon carve open my chest?

…have sex with the hottest person you know who is freshly dead OR have sex with the smelliest and nastiest person alive?
necrophilia is crazy, bring me a blindfold and a nose clamp.

…be a loud 9/11 truther OR a loud flat-earther?
i watched that zeitgeist movie and i can be talked into believing literally any conspiracy; the idea that the government isn’t hiding shit from us regular idiots is absurd. are there aliens? what happened to that plane that disappeared a few years ago? IS PAUL McCARTNEY REAL? i feel like you need to learn much more science and engineering than i ever will to support the inside job theory, so falling off the edge of the earth it is.

…have a cat with a human face OR a dog with hands for paws?
we are lesbians, not dog people!!!

…be forced to say “m’lady” every time you address a woman OR yell “i’m an atheist!!!!!” as loud as possible every time someone says “bless you” after you sneeze?
the idea of yelling anything, at anyone, is deeply humiliating to me. and not me having a religious argument while sucking post nasal drip down my throat and itching my nose or wiping snot off my face or whatever else you have to do in the immediate aftermath of a huge sneeze. i would buy a newsboy cap just to doff it.

…have bed sheets made of cheese slices OR a floor made of raw hamburger meat?
both of these make my skin crawl for real, but think about the noises that floor makes. it would be like walking around barefoot on top of someone’s wet, slimy mouth sounds and that is revolting.

…never be able to love OR never be loved?
this is rude, but loving people is hard and unrewarding a lot of the time? meanwhile, being loved is like drugs.

a few bops to help get the party started:
before james blake
one of them nights gigamesh
best to you blood orange
aventador goldlink
joyride kesha

plaintiff: debra from madison, wisconsin. ooh, i love when people come to fake television court dressed like it’s real. debra walks down the courtroom catwalk dressed in a pinstripe black suit paired with a periwinkle shirt, gold hoop earrings, gold chains, and a bunch of gold rings on her fingers. i fucking love it, she looks incredible. debra is a short, stocky middle-aged white woman with dyed auburn hair and a thick layer of gorgeous red blush and periwinkle eye shadow, details i find important to mention because i accidentally jumped ahead and saw what her boyfriend looks like.

breaking news! i have been mentioned in the press a couple of times recently, always a cause for deep mortification i mean joyful celebration, so please allow me to choke on my own fat cock for one minute: first, i got a shout out in variety for getting fucking fired from the television show shrill eight years ago; truly a hilarious and absurd situation that i had mostly forgotten about, and now i am irritated anew! second, emma sarappo from the atlantic (v smart, v journalistic, extremely legit magazine) is literally in love with me, therefore earning my undying love in return. not my silly piss-and-shit books gracing the same esteemed publication as ta-nehisi coates once did???

defendant: edward from milwaukee, wisconsin. THIS IS MY SON. this is the man that i gave birth to twenty-seven years ago after forest whitaker made tender, romantic love to me after hours on the set of ghost dog: the way of the samurai. no for real, this tall, husky bespectacled brother is an exact facsimile of the child that would spring forth fully formed from my brow after i swallowed his father if i was an ancient greek myth instead of a clown born in the 80s and raised on redd foxx. anyway, samantha irby jr is dressed in a black zip up sweater coupled with a black t-shirt and black slacks, an outfit samantha irby sr would wear every single day if she ever had to leave her home. like father, like son.

the complaint: debra says she met edward online and believed they were in an exclusive relationship, but claims she later learned he was also dating another woman. debra is suing edward for unpaid loans and half the cost of a vacation!

what does she want: $3021 (that is too specific to not be a real amount)

how it went down: debra says she met ed in june on BLACK PEOPLE MEET DOT COM. i just busted out laughing, not because i’m making fun of her, but guess who also fucked some fat black dudes off that website? i’m not gonna doxx anyone because i’m too broke to get sued but let’s just say every black person i know (of a certain age) including myself has hooked up with someone off that bpm. idk what it’s like now but back in the early 00s it was the place to find a sensitive, head-wrapped, chunky accessory-wearing vegetarian incense dude to kick it with for the night. everybody on there looked like fucking raheem devaughn and wore egyptian musk oil, it was an incredible time to be having casual sex!

i’ll tell you what, though: in my day there weren’t any white people on it? maybe a couple of jon b types with high fades and sculpted goatees snuck in, but i don’t remember seeing my local chase bank branch manager trolling for cock on there!!! the judge says, “i’m sorry, you met on what?” and debra says, louder this time and with more enunciation, “Black. People. Meet. Dot. Com.” greg is like, “that’s where you go to meet black people?” and debra says, “and also caucasian people!” not to gatekeep (yes, to gatekeep) but we had to go on there because white dudes on eharmony or wherever were never clicking on our black ass profiles. no one was logging on with the intention of running into their eleventh grade physics teacher! that’s fine girl, who fucking cares sleep with whoever you want, but i need miss debra to be honest about what color meat she was trying to introduce herself to.

greg says that even though it sounds prejudiced everyone is entitled to their preference, then asks debra if she wanted to meet white people, too. she replies, “my preference is black” and okay great i’m glad we got that out of the way! debra says that she and ed got serious as soon as they started dating, and that when they were intimate ed would start talking (the judge, interrupting: “what kind of talking? dirty talking?? what was he saying, is it safe for TV???”) about how she was the only one he wanted to be with. y’all know not to give any weight to the words coming out of the mouth of a person who has an appendage inside of you at the time, right? even if it sounds like real human words, that shit is gibberish and you should ignore it, especially if it sounds like some kind of offer or promise!

AND GREG AGREES. he stops debra and says, “ma’am, let me slow you down. you should know this, but anything said in the heat of intimacy isn’t necessarily true.” he asks edward if it meant any of the things he told her and edward says, “it was just something to say.” for real? why not just say something easy and noncommittal like, “damn, i love that thing you’re doing to my balls” or “hey, use this flashlight and show me where your clitoris is?” shiiiiiiit, i gotta come back next lifetime as a man. anyway debra says she’s not so naive that she’d believe anything he’d said during pillow talk, but isn’t that the foundation of her argument?

debra says that she and ed had talked about moving in together, and that ed was considering leaving the milwaukee police department (where he was a detective) and moving to madison to work in the justice department. they lived eighty miles apart, and debra says ed would often joke around asking her whether or not she’d found him a job yet; to me that just sounds like the kind of joke you make after spending an hour and a half on the highway with a hard dick, not a realistic indication of a potential career change. debra says that one day her ex-sister in law called her for a ride but she told her couldn’t pick her up because she was at her boyfriend’s house in milwaukee. the ex-SIL called a few weeks later just to chitchat, trying to catch up on the new boyfriend goss. debra told her that she was dating a milwaukee cop-turned-detective named ed. the ex-SIL asked for more details, then asked, “is his screen name ‘not into games?’” UH OH. debra told her it indeed had been her man’s online handle, and the ex-SIL said, “wow, i’m dating him, too.”

ed’s tactic is to paint the relationship as unserious by saying that he and debra slept together the same night they met, and that’s fucking cheap. we’re not still doing “she’s a slut, she fucked me on the first date” as an excuse for our shitty behavior, are we? ed says that after they started dating they both left their profiles active on the site, and every time he logged on debra would be on there, too. he makes it sound like she was only online to monitor when he was online and calls her a “stalker,” but that feels harsh? i’m never going to write a dissertation but if i did?? it would absolutely 100% be about the kind of borderline insane shit you do when you are fucking someone who doesn’t really like you that much. on second thought, maybe i’ve already done it.

edward says that debra found out he was on another site from her ex-SIL (doyle the bailiff: “was it meet white people dot com?”) and the next day debra made an account on that site and started sending him chat requests there asking what he was doing and why, if he had time to be online, he wasn’t talking to her. are any murders getting solved in milwaukee? is every fentanyl dealer locked up?? have all the missing children been found??? how does detective nomoregames have all this fucking screen time???? ed says he told debra that he needed space because she was “being a nuisance.” a human male? daring to brand me a nuisance??? i would take my own life!

the ruling: debra says she had planned a vacation to florida with an ex-boyfriend and when she mentioned it to ed he enthusiastically said, “i’d like to go!” she starts talking about how much the trip cost and how after they got back to wisconsin ed told her he didn’t have any money, then greg rudely and lowkey aggressively interrupts her to demand, “why would he have to pay if he was just a stand in for another man?”

okay i got confused, let’s run it back: debra told edward about her upcoming trip, ed said he wanted to go, nobody went. the way she originally worded it, both judge mathis and i thought she’d taken ed on the trip and when they got back he’d refused to give her any money. what actually happened was that ed called debra a week before the trip and said he couldn’t afford to go, and she wants her money back because that didn’t give her enough time to find someone else to take with her on vacation.

now, the loans:
$646 for his half of the trip (it’s unclear to me if he’s really on the hook for that?)
$677 for his energy bill (is this dude running 37 AC units at all times, or)
$298 for his cell phone
$896 for his plasma TV
$500 for his pockets
i’m sorry but this lady is too old to be getting worked like this. i’m not saying this from the top of my soapbox, i absolutely bought a fucking bonehead a playstation for christmas one year; the difference is that i was like nineteen at the time and my brain was made of room temperature unsalted butter. debra appears to be my current age, at minimum. if i buy a man a $900 television that will live in a house where i don’t, i will do so knowing full well that i am tricking. that man is going to try to pay for that TV with his dick, which i cannot apply to the best buy credit card i hastily opened to get 15% off this ill-advised purchase.

edward tries to say that these were all gifts debra insisted on giving him (oh yeah? she was just dying for you to watch the bucks game in 4K???) and greg calls bullshit on that pretty quickly. he does, however, hear ed out on the vacation of it all, because according to the judge a week is plenty of time to (black people) meet someone else to take with you on an all-inclusive vacation. judge mathis tells debra he won’t make ed pay for the aborted vacation but says if she’s that vexed about the other half of the money she should try to find and sue the guy who originally bailed on her, which is hilarious and cold as hell. judgment for debra despite that sick burn, and ACAB!!!!!!!!!!! (all cops are behindontheirphonebills)

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “ma’am, i guess it’s okay as long as you aren’t prejudiced against white people, we’re trying to get away from that in this society…………………….i bet you’re one of them obama voters, aren’t ya?”

bangs gavel

"girlies, rub on your titties"

de la soul did a fucking tiny desk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

new yebba! dang babygirl can fucking sing.
new harry styles! dang babygirl can fucking dance.
new willow! dang babygirl can fucking emote.
new kacey! dang babygirl is fucking horny.

i watched the cursed top model documentary and boy do i feel gross. first of all, is tyra’s mama still alive? because somebody who loves her should have advised her what a bad look her participation in this doc was going to be. did she know they were gonna show all those clips in which she looks like a fucking supervillain when she sat down in that inspector gadget trench coat to be interviewed? did she know we were gonna reexamine what happened to shandi? did she know everyone with a netflix password was gonna see that she never visited miss j after he had a fucking STROKE? you will never see heaven, tyra banks!!!
you know a thing i wonder? for someone like her, how much money is enough and when is it time to put down the contour stick and pass the torch? do you need to be a public figure forever? i just saw a thing about how bridget fonda is fat and normal now, and some people were tripping but i love that for her. that bitch needs to leave behind a hot corpse? WHAT FOR? i appreciate that she opted out of being a prisoner to hollywood beauty standards and was like, “fuck fame, i’m gonna raise my kids and eat chips” and bounced to mind her fucking business. if i get to a place where i can afford to exit polite society and hibernate in a cave for the rest of my life i’m fucking doing it. i will not be fifty-two years old writing about huffing my own farts on the internet!
the revelation that tyra’s cooking up another season??? embarrassing! retire already, sister! why can’t she just chill somewhere cute, eat carbohydrates, and leave the rest of us in peace?

daddy came back to the pitt!!
daddy came back to the pitt!!
daddy came back to the pitt!!
daddy came back to the pitt!!
daddy came back to the pitt!!

a grab bag of hilarious garbage i’ve been sitting and looking at
white man shaking ass to korn
this diva
“you mad, ahh look where you eatin’ at”
and this diva
jane don’t v kenya pleaser “feels like another one”
i was in the 212
this incredible diva
hot men being sweeties to each other
why are there so many jaylens in the NBA?
these divas
and these divas!!!
SNL car song
denali v kahmora “100% pure love”
the announcers calling this goalie fight
nene leakes core
this other diva
WHAT’S MY FAVORITE WORD?
i don’t even know what this is but it made me laugh so fucking hard

BIG NEWS: my gal pal lindy west has a new book, adult braces, birthed into the world yesterday, about how her husband got a secret girlfriend and lindy had to take a monthlong road trip in a spray-painted van about it.
she is currently touring the country, driving across america in a sprinter van with her face on it, and i am joining her for her stops in CHICAGO and in DETROIT. they’re both happening next weekend and both events are ticketed (cheap, but ticketed nonetheless). i am currently writing the stupidest questions to ever be spoken by a human mouth, so it should be fun.
my handsome friend steve reidell designed tour merch for us that you can purchase here; the money is going to a worthy cause, his pockets. the shirts hard as fuck and if i see you on the street in one i will consensually motorboat your gorgeous breasts.
oh and speaking of books, you can get mine for 20% off from bookshop.org because it’s march and i’m a woman, so please do that.

the new mitski is so good. i love her so much.
here is a mixtape of my faves:
i don’t like my mind
cats (this sad stuff is really my shit for real)
i want you
working for the knife
lonesome love
the deal
jobless monday
stay soft (BLAST THIS!)
me and my husband (another one to listen to real loud)
wife
there’s nothing left for you
a loving feeling
because dreaming costs money, my dear
a pearl
remember my name (in the car, volume up, singing loud)
i’m your man
your best american girl
nobody (another one to blow out your speakers)
i’ll change for you

i’m still only reading gay smut. i just finished a book called pansies (one of them is a florist) a couple days ago, i’m partway through missed steps (one of them is an amputee), reddit told me to buy how to bang a billionaire (one of them is a billionaire) so i did, i also bought the interesting-looking and allegedly spicy impromptu match (one of them is a monster who wrestles), and i’m most of the way through see you at the finish line (both of them row crew).
i don’t review books i read because…………….isn’t finishing it the review? i don’t hate read! if i’m not vibing with a book i don’t read it anymore! it’s always so funny and weird to me when you see someone going on and on about how much they hate a book they willingly dedicated many minutes of their one wild and precious life to consuming. are you made of time? anyway if i read a book, i liked it. fuck a star!!!

being alive is a nightmare, love you!

auntie music is back, thank god:
BBB by juvenile juvie is fine as FUCK and you can tell he fucks fat bitches, which is extremely important to me. i’m not sure if i can explain it scientifically, but you just know in your heart when a man is rapping to a lady over three hundred pounds. like, he’s not asking a size two if she “wants [her] ass smacked real hard,” you know what i mean? he’s talking to a big booty bitch, a sturdy woman he can use his dick to piledrive through a box spring and she won’t even say “ouch.” this is sex music for ladies with four bra hooks!!!!!!!

jill scott to whom this may concern welcome back to the patron saint of the wide-hipped. jill has the most gorgeous voice in the entire universe, it’s so heartstoppingly beautiful, she will bring tears to your eyes every time you listen to her. her first record came out when i was 20? but i was lucky enough to see her a couple years before that because she was touring with the roots, singing the erykah badu part on you got me, and i was instantly smitten.
who is jill scott? changed my chemistry, experience 826+ blew my fucking mind, beautifully human blasted me into outer space. she simply cannot make a bad song, and i’m glad she has returned to us when we need her the most. my faves on the new record so far (i am listening to it constantly):
the math inexplicably makes me tear up??? all music should sound like this
pressha
offdaback
to b honest feat JID, who is amazing
a universe
this is adult lady music. this music doesn’t get her period anymore; this music carries a pocketbook, she eats dinner while the sun is still up, she was alive before the internet was widely available. this music can’t drink too close to bedtime, she wears pantyhose, she keeps a pair of whimsically-patterned readers in every room of her house, she thinks of olivia benson as a close personal friend. this music calls everybody under the age of forty “baby” or “niece;” she uses cocoa butter, she has a special friend named jerome, she has a passed-down recipe for collard greens, she goes to the actual bank. this is music you blast from the speakers of a 2022 nissan altima with a fuzzy pink steering wheel cover and a rhinestoned license plate frame. this is grown folks music!

my personal and completely subjective valentine candy ranking:
kit kat bears (fresh) the joy of any holiday candy season is is knowing that whatever novelty shape you decide to purchase hasn’t been sitting in the back of a walgreens shelf getting soft for months.
brach’s cherry jube jel hearts is this just heart-shaped bits of artificially-flavored red wax that i have to get at farm and fleet because no normal stores carry them? well, yes!
laderach frisch schoggi sticks maybe this is the most delicious chocolate i’ve ever had? months ago holly sent me some along with a bunch of edibles (this is true friendship) and my stoner ass got hooked. thank god i have to order it through the mail because that is built-in impulse control; wait?? three to five days??? FOR A SNACK????? no, thank you! anyway i gave these sticks out for valentine’s day this year and that was cute, but real luxury is buying a slab for yourself to break off a piece whenever you need a decadent, cost-prohibitive treat, which i will never do again unless i win the lottery.
any of the many dove varietals to me, the highest quality cheap chocolate you can get at the store, hands down. a hershey bar is dog food in comparison.
gummy peach hearts they’re just like the rings but heart-shaped, which makes them cuter. get your cocofloss and your waterpik ready, because they will rapidly destroy your weak, crumbling old teeth. i haven’t had one in years, because did you know i have to use prescription toothpaste now because i just had another jaw surgery? if a piece of sticky candy touches my teeth they will launch themselves from my skull.
those individually packaged russell stover marshmallow hearts you don’t need to buy a case of these unless you own a walgreens but i couldn’t find a better way to show you all the kinds!!
fererro roche in the heart-shaped novelty box these feel like crunchy dust in your mouth and the smell of hazelnuts is sometimes sickening to me, but if you get a good, recently-produced batch they can be sharp yet smooshy lil pieces of heaven.
all cherry valentine dots i’m noticing a theme here, which is that i like everything most other people find absolutely disgusting. there’s comfort in that.

a couple sexy things to watch?
love jones i have three (pivotal, foundational to who i am as a person) movie posters on my office wall: an enormous, framed poster advertising the last seduction; a canvas collage/painting depicting a bunch of shit from death proof, a masterpiece; and this beauty, printed on matte card stock and tacked up over my desk. i’ve written at length about how this movie was the blueprint for what i thought romantic love could look like at its best, and i spent many years waiting for someone to write a love poem about my literal ass as a result. still the most lush, sensual movie, still makes me wish my life had a jazz soundtrack.

unfaithful when homegirl is fucking that gorgeous french dude and slapping him in the face? when homegirl almost drives off the highway in the rain and has a jealous tantrum and forgets about her son and takes it up the ass in the dingy hallway while dude still has his coat on?? when homegirl wears her expensive lace thong and gets fucked in the bathroom while someone else is in there taking a huge shit??? nothing hotter. PLUS cucked richard gere!!!

some good melancholy-ass love songs
fool me as many times as you like daudi (gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous heartache)
are you in love? james blake
why you wanna TI
feeling for the wall meshell ndegeocello
your love is killing me sharon van etten
lines eloise
nauseous conan gray
sunshine skin jordan stephens
out my mind just in time erykah badu
close but not quite everything is recorded feat sampha
everybody here wants you jeff buckley (so slinky and sexy)
sticky rice aunt comet
some unholy war (downtempo) amy winehouse
the lengths the black keys

the three sexiest items on the chili’s menu!
unfortunately for everyone involved we spent valentine’s day with the children, which means we met them at chili’s. before you turn your nose up in disgust, consider this: THE COST OF FEEDING A TWENTY-YEAR-OLD MAN. this dude is 6'4 and built like an offensive lineman and he loves to get cute and order “the market priced fish of the day” when treated to the kind of restaurant that doesn’t have paper napkins or salt shakers on the table, and i’m not paying for that. at least not on a saturday afternoon, dressed in one of my many trashed nike hoodies!
the first time i took the boy to dinner, when he was seven (goddamn i’ve been with his mama a long time), this little shit looked at the server and was like, “i’ll have the lobster ravioli, please” and i died right there at the table and now my ghost is writing this. it was, like………………….thirty-seven dollars. i guess the rest of us will just have water??? and i let him get it too, because i’m the fucking problem.
the children and their various mates were unavailable to join us for my birthday, so instead my consolation prize was watching strangers make love to steaming plates of southwestern egg rolls on a saturday i could have otherwise spent doing fun shit on my phone.
tito’s punch okay, this shit is juice, it’s boozy kool-aid. it’s got vodka and rum and i drank two of them in rapid succession before the food even hit the table and probably could’ve been convinced to take my shirt off in the middle of the lunch rush. your girl was loose.
the triple dipper i didn’t order this but doesn’t it sound like the name of a complicated sexual position?
quesadilla explosion that’s another word for an orgasm, right? “yeah baby, make my quesadilla explode.” you hear it!!

some romance novels i’ve purchased over the past few weeks because maybe that’s all i’m gonna read now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
unrealistic expectations andie j christopher relationship therapist gets a fake boyfriend to promote her new book (should i try that?)
the prospects kt hoffman trans minor league baseball rivals in love
out on a limb hannah bonam-young limb differences, unplanned pregnancy
i’ll have what he’s having adib khorram gay sommelier + gay substitute teacher
the pairing casey mcquiston gay exes on vacation in europe
learning curves rachel lacey fat lesbians, i think? (i honestly can’t remember)
champagne kisses katherine webb fat black lady, big-dicked asian playboy
one last try jemma croft HOT gay rugby dads boning
daddy issues kate goldbeck i mean…………….you can guess
the shots you take rachel reid more gay hockey smut
the wall of winnipeg and me mariana zapata asshole football guy woos his sweetie pie former assistant
please don’t go e salvador suicidal woman/grieving man
you should be so lucky cat sebastian gay baseball in the 60s
impromptu match (goliaths of wrestling book 1) lily mayne gargoyles in an underground wrestling league who fuck!!!

yes this is all too late to be useful, BUT: what are you gonna do about it?
XOXOXO

a lil treat!

plaintiff: shaun from lemay, georgia. shaun glides into the courtroom smooth as silk, wearing a black mandarin-collar dress shirt under a fitted black blazer, accented by sparkling diamond studs in each ear, a shiny gold watch, the glint of a gold bracelet peeking out from under his left cuff, and a beard so sharp you could use it to slice deli meat. he’s fancy!

defendant: royce from atlanta, georgia. royce is tall and lean, caramel-complected, with skinny auburn locs and a skinny auburn goatee. if these two were in a sexual relationship, i fully understand why. he’s gorgeous!

the complaint: shaun says he moved in with royce three months after they met (mm hmm) but claims he caught him dancing with another man at the club soon after. shaun says royce then vandalized his home, so he’s suing him for damaged property and a phone bill!

what does he want: $2413!! countersuit is in the building: royce would like $1102 for the cost of a TV!

how it went down: before we dive in, a little treat: my friend tim just released a podcast (stay with me, i promise it’s fucking cool even though he is a man) called judge travis, a scripted audio series about a fake TV judge who maybe kind of sort of a little bit bears a resemblance to a real fake TV judge with whom everyone reading this is intimately familiar. it’s comedy (we live in hell, trust i will never suggest anything serious ever) and stars two of the most hilarious and perfect dudes on this planet, langston kerman and my alternate universe husband bashir salahuddin. he’s incredible. i mean, watch this one, too. and this!! bashir’s not in this one, but it’s one of my favorite sequences in the entire series so you should watch it anyway. wait, why not just go watch every season of south side if you haven’t already? i’ll be here when you get back. back to our regularly scheduled programming!

shaun says that he met royce in january and they got close very quickly, so quickly that royce moved in with him in march. (that’s too quickly.) shaun says their relationship started to go downhill immediately after royce moved in; royce like to drink and party and stay out until five in the morning. greg says, “what was he doing until five in the morning?” and royce answers, “at the after hours spot,” which reminded me that i went to bed at midnight and was wide awake at three-thirty and i couldn’t even summon the strength to get up and use the bathroom, how in the world was dude partying until five??? i know the answer is “youth,” BUT: were we ever that young? royce should be in the olympics.

shaun says he popped up on royce at the after hours spot and caught him dancing with another man. greg, gay mess aficionado, eagerly asks, “like a lap dance?” shaun says no and he continues, “oh, were they dancing close all up on each other?” and diva??? please relax?????? shaun says that royce was dancing with his mouth near the man’s ear and his hands in his pants, and i just finished reading all six of the heated rivalry books so my brain immediately thought “stroking his rigid member as it strained against his tight jeans.” i gotta keep reading gay smut i guess, because now that i’m versed in the lexicon i no longer understand any other english words. if you’re not talking to me about a hot release splashing up your chiseled abs and coating your nipples, you are not talking to me.

shaun says he didn’t want to cause a scene, so he took royce outside and calmly told him to come remove his belongings (including his two dogs) from his apartment when he was done dancing. he did and they broke up. royce says that they weren’t together when he was dancing on the man at the club, because shaun had texted him while he was at work saying he no longer wanted to be with him. shaun cuts his eyes and warns, “be truthful!” in the same tone my mom used to hiss, “don’t touch a goddamn thing in here!” while digging her nails into my upper arm as we crossed the threshold of literally any store. that kind of shit is why i have mommy issues! i liked it :(

royce says that he knew shaun was talking to another man and disapproved of it, and greg puts his cape on and says, “how do you know he wasn’t talking to him about you? maybe he was bragging!” and yeah, okay, that is a thing that absolutely happens between young, attractive people! royce says that he went through their text messages and it seemed like the two of them were trying to rekindle a past romantic relationship so he assumed he was going to get dumped soon. superjudge once again dons his cape to defend shaun and i’m like, “does he know him?” innocent until proven guilty, for sure, but if you’re regularly talking to your ex about revisiting the good times you had together and i met you a scant twelve weeks ago, i don’t think it’s totally out of line to go spelunking in another man’s cave on the dance floor!

it’s february, did you know?, so lately i’ve been lulling myself to a fitful, inconsistent, overheated menopause night nap with the help of some dusties. it’s real night moods with mel devonne on v103 hours every night over here (in my headphones only, my lady goes to sleep at seven-thirty and i am not allowed to make noise). my birthday is on friday the 13th (it’s giving CURSED) and babyyyy i’m inching close to fifty, which is insane. first of all, why am i not dead? second, i still have the instincts and humor of a geriatric twelve-year-old boy, is that ever going to change? anyway, here’s some tunes if you’re trying to channel auntie late at night. THIS IS GROWN FOLKS’ MUSIC:
love won’t let me wait major harris
been so long anita baker (her best???)
you sure love to ball marvin gaye (this is a mother! fucking! jam!)
lady of magic maze and frankie beverly
love bankrupt patti labelle
ebony eyes rick james
you are my starship norman connors (remember when you could be a famous singer even though your name was fucking norman?!)
let me down easy the isley brothers
i try angela bofill
why have i lost you? cameo
tell me if you still care the s.o.s. band

judge mathis definitely has a quiet storm playlist on his ipod, right????? okay, royce says that in addition to the texting, he also saw shaun’s snapchat in which another man (presumably the ex?) was in the background in his bed. i know none of this matters because we’re here to talk about broken television sets and unpaid phone bills, but if i had to date right now i would pass away instead. first of all, i thought snapchat was over. second, the energy to chase someone from app to app to monitor their activity in an effort to ensure they aren’t cheating on you: where does one find the energy? i would give myself an aneurysm trying to analyze instagram stories and scan linkedin connections and read other people’s idiotic texts trying to discern their subliminal meanings. how do you find that many hours in a day? how do you protect yourself from getting scammed?? do you ever get to fucking relax??? imagine how trash my hinge profile would look, my stupid fucking jokes. i couldn’t do it, no way. if my lady leaves me one of you will have to mercy kill me with a hammer.

shaun is suing royce because royce disputed a cell phone payment he’d made with his bank (that is a clunky sentence but you’re smart, you get it) then broke his phone when he threw it at him. this was during the “pick your shit up” phase of the breakup, and shaun told royce that since he’d stopped payment on the phone he couldn’t also take the TV they’d gotten together. a few days later shaun went to st louis to visit his mother and royce broke into his house, destroyed the carpet and the television (jail!) and a bunch of clothing, then he stole his passport. three months in and they’re on a shared phone plan and already know where each other’s important documents are? i’ve been with my lady for thirteen years and she couldn’t tell you where my passport is with a gun to her head! she doesn’t know what my blood type is!! we have never shared a bank account!!! BRING BACK BEING A MYSTERY TO YOUR PARTNER.

the ruling: royce admitted to shaun that he’d reversed the payment on the phone bill out of spite and he admits as much to the judge today in court. he also copped to breaking into shaun’s house and tearing it up, and that’s really honorable but he’s gonna have to pay for that. i hope it at least felt good in the moment? as far as his counterclaim is concerned, royce has proof that his mother was the one who purchased the television set (boring receipts!) and text messages in which he and shaun were arguing back and forth and shaun told him that he would give royce the TV in exchange for the phone (fun receipts!) he threw at him and broke. everyone gets everything, but shaun gets a little more.

standing in the hallway with doyle the bailiff after the case, the tension between these two is so thick i can actually see it on my computer screen. they both wish each other the best (they don’t mean it!!!) and shaun gives royce the runner-up coldest “good luck” of all time.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: to shaun “ooh, he’s so jealous! you must’ve really put it on him, huh?”

speaking of putting it on somebody, a few more bangers to get you right:
key to love (is understanding) the majestics
you’re still a young man tower of power
feel the fire peabo bryson
games people play the spinners
irons in the fire teena marie

*bangs gavel*

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plaintiff: ramaar from calumet city, illinois. WHO IS THIS DIVA? ramaar sashays down the courtroom catwalk™ in a brown argyle sweater vest layered over a crisp white dress shirt paired with grey slacks. ramaar is wearing chic metal frames, his hair is in neat rows of perfect little tiny twists, and he has what can only be described as a “thick goatee.” you know how some gentleman have a beard that’s so fine it looks like it was sketched on with a marker? ramaar has the complete opposite of that: a lush and full chinchilla pelt keeping his upper lip warm, the kind you can imagine gently brushing the skin on the insides of your [REDACTED]. i bet he uses beard oil!!

defendant: carson from chicago, illinois. i love when there are gay people on here, because no one loves gay people and mess more than gregory ellis mathis. carson strides into the room (he is switching so hard i’m surprised he hasn’t dislocated a hip???) wearing a black dress shirt and jeans with an embroidered design on them, like the pair i wore to my eighth grade graduation. he’s very tall, and very bald, and he’s bringing his documents to court in a manila file folder???? i thought they handed out accordions of truth™ to every contestant before they walked onto the set, like a consolation prize in advance. this is shocking to me! how is he expecting to keep everything together without that elastic string?

the complaint: ramaar started dating carson after they met online, and he says their relationship was volatile from the start. ramaar says he eventually kicked carson out of his home and, in retaliation, carson assaulted him and broke his glasses and then stole his gorgeous fur coat!!! outrageous.

what does he want: $5000! the maximum!! countersuit filed: carson would also like $5000, for unspecified “bills” and emotional distress!!!

how it went down: ramaar says he originally met carson online (please god i need to know what site) and they lost touch but reconnected four years later. gotta pause here and tell you two things: 1 my A key is acting weird and not always typing and i’m not irritated yet, but as soon as i am i will not be going back to fix all the missing As i apologize in advance, and 2 he talked to a guy he’d met on adult friend finder (let’s pretend) four years after making his initial acquaintance? in what world! my sister was meeting men to fuck on there years and years ago, and i had no freaking idea what that site even was when she casually asked if i wanted to look at her “dating profile.” of course i said i did, i would love to make fun of whatever movies she lied and said she was into or how she described her bad personality, but when she handed me her phone my eyeballs fell out of my fucking head after they were immediately assaulted by the profile picture of her dinner plate areolae and her frank declaration that she was “looking for a man to pound [her] throat hard and raw.” let me fucking tell you something: i wanted to die. first of all………………we have the same mom??!!?!?! second, what do those words mean when all put together like that??? is your throat hard and raw? is his penis both hard and raw?? or when you say “pound” do you actually mean you want someone to punch you in your neck??? up to that point i’d only been on okcupid and the other one that’s secretly religious propaganda, and even though i am depraved i was scandalized!

ramaar says that once they reconnected he and carson jumped headfirst into a relationship, and everything was going smoothly until carson’s mother moved in with them. HOLD UP. they got together in the first week of february, moved in together on the 15th of february, then his mama moved in a couple weeks after that? what are they, lesbians?!??! greg is also concerned, and says that the number one piece of dating advice he gives is “know people before you move them in.” i’ve known my lady for 13+ years and at least once a week i still fantasize about renting a side apartment for myself, carson moved in after two scant weeks? nothing good can come of that!

carson interjects, saying ramaar asked him to move in because he was scared to be in the house alone, and ramaar interjects back (?) that he invited carson to move in because he was over at his house every night anyway. carson says ramaar had an itty bitty dog that was supposed to protect him but she didn’t (someone knocked on the door a couple days ago and our stinky little dog abraham made a big show of unburying himself from under the duvet only to investigate nothing and sit hysterically barking from his spot in the bed, so i can relate to owning a small, useless dog) so ramaar asked carson to move in so he could bite any would be trespassers.

commercial break: would you maybe want to talk to me for charity? my best pal emmy kastner is helping to organize a publishing community auction whose proceeds will go to immigrant communities in minnesota, and i agreed to zoom with whoever bids the most money to gossip with me about dumb shit for thirty minutes. the starting bid is a hundred bucks, and i need you to know that i did not set that price, but i will try my best to make it worth it!! other industry people are offering manuscript critiques or behind the scenes publishing info but come on now, i am not doing any of that! bid on those people if you want to know how to write a riveting query!! i’m down to talk about pretty much anything; you can ask me questions, tell me your deepest secrets, take your shirt off, whatever you want. the auction will be live january 28 at midnight, and pretty please someone bid on this so i don’t look like a stupid fucking asshole in front of my friend. now back to our regularly scheduled programming!

ramaar says that he and carson had a volatile relationship and says carson was never really violent, he was just detrimental and emotionally abusive. carson yells from across the courtroom, “LIES and DECEIT! you were emotionally abusive to YOURSELF!” and he might be proving ramaar’s point. carson says he lost contact with ramaar after their first encounter on purpose, because there was zero attraction to him at all. (emphasis his!) carson says that ramaar would call him every now and again to check in and eventually he just gave in and decided “to do some charity work.” that’s some cold shit, and the judge absolutely loves it. he can’t stop laughing.

carson continues, saying that his mother moved in for a short time while she was waiting for her apartment to get ready. carson says that shortly after she moved in he started to notice that ramaar was getting “nasty text messages” and naked pictures. when i first heard nasty texts my mind went to fighting, but of course carson is talking about seXXXts. ramaar exclaims, “he was going through my personal stuff!” and carson says that he saw how many messages ramaar was getting and made a joke about it, and when ramaar was angry and defensive in response he knew that something was up and went snooping through his phone. what, no passwords? the only spicy things in my phone are approximately one hundred hours of heated rivalry edits, and even i have a passcode on my shit! if my phone was dinging with spread labial folds every five minutes i would keep it in a safe!!!

judge mathis says, “let me give you some advice i give to all mates: if you go looking for something and violate your person’s privacy, you are going to end up hurting your own feelings.” amen, brother. ramaar snaps, “if you go looking for something, you’re gonna find it” then greg adds, “and probably misinterpret it!” that is very generous? i’m not sure how you’d misinterpret another man’s balls in your boyfriend’s inbox, but what the hell do i know. the judge asks carson if he saw texts about ramaar hooking up with other men, and when he says yes ramaar interrupts to tell us that those texts were old as hell, also how did he get into his phone anyway? i, too, would love to know this! espionage seems so fun!!

carson says he didn’t misinterpret a damn thing because the messages were explicit, including one that said, “this [redacted] is wet and ready for you.” well, okay! greg cannot contain his glee and busts out laughing, as does the entire audience, and now i have unlocked a new fear: having something i wrote when i was attempting to sound sexy referenced aloud in front of a group of bored chicagoans who had nothing better to do on a weekday afternoon than go to the nbc building downtown and watch people fight each other over $45.

this argument about the text messages devolved into a physical altercation when carson’s mother chiquita got between them and ramaar looked like he was about to strike her, causing carson to preemptively punch him in the face and break his glasses. ramaar told carson and his mother to move out of his house, which carson says they did that same evening but ramaar claims it took them three days. that’s a not insignificant difference! ramaar claims that once carson finally got all of his stuff moved it, he took inventory and discovered his fur coat was missing. ramaar enters a picture of himself wearing the fur coat into evidence, and it’s the greatest thing i have ever seen; i didn’t go to my prom, but you know those prom pictures that have the blue sears portrait backdrop with two moody teens posing in front of it? ramaar’s photo looks exactly like that, except he is a full grown adult and he’s making fuck me eyes at the camera. exquisite!

carson says if he’d have stolen ramaar’s coat he would’ve waltzed into the courtroom wearing it today, and goddamn i wish we were friends. he’s so fucking funny. also, i just noticed that he is wearing a leather belt with a bejeweled cheetah as the buckle?? i am obsessed with him, what a perfect person! okay carson explains that he’d brought a cedar chest to ramaar’s house and stored all their coats together inside it, and when ramaar told him to move out he boxed up his coats and threw ramaar’s on the floor. ramaar isn’t offering any proof of theft; he has a bunch of police reports, but they’re all for domestic disputes, not robbery. they were together for a total of seventeen minutes and accrued six separate police reports?? that is absurd??? sounds like somebody needs to reactivate their grindr profiles!!!

the ruling: the judge tells ramaar he hasn’t brought anything concrete that shows him carson stole his coat, and ramaar says “either he has it, or his mother has it,” prompting chiquita to gasp and whip around in her witness chair to glare at him. greg says, “if that’s true then you just blew your case” and come on man, you have to be savvier than this! either sue them both or pretend his mom isn’t there, otherwise you’ll lose both your floor-length possum fur coat and this court case.

ramaar pivots and tells the judge that carson destroyed things in his house but unfortunately for him he’s not suing for those things today, but then his homegirl that’s with him jumps up and starts yelling at carson about all the bad shit he did to him, then carson starts yelling (louder) that ramaar’s house was in foreclosure and he paid all the bills when they were living together. ramaar’s homegirl keeps yelling (even louder) at carson about what a terrible person he is, and carson continues to yell back (loudest of all) “HE’S POOR. HE’S POOR. HE’S POOR. HE’S POOR.” judge mathis is happier than a pig in shit, giggling and kicking his feet like this is the best day of his life. marie-kondo-i-love-mess dot gif!!

carson and homegirl escalate and start roasting each other’s looks, and greg is straight up delighted but come on man we’re going off the rails here, let’s wrap this UP. homegirl starts calling carson tacky and then, under her breath, she calls him a “sissy.” LGBTQIA+ advocate gregory mathis is not going to tolerate homophobia of any sort, and he shouts “i heard you use that slur!” and boots her out of the courtroom, which is exhilarating. judge mathis said GAY RIGHTS, bitch!!!!!! carson tries to tell the judge about the bills he paid (apparently he couldn’t live without cable TV and ramaar couldn’t afford it) and was never compensated for but we’re done here. carson gets a $500 bone for his emotional distress (blah blah police report blah) and ramaar gets nothing but the rest of the dog to go make a replacement coat with.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “and he said the little dog wasn’t working, so he had to bring in the big dog!!!!”

*bangs gavel*

here are some fan edits i’ve been watching on a continuous loop, because this show has truly rearranged my brain chemistry in a matter of days:
ilya and shane all kissing moments
it’s probably gross to hear this since i gave birth to you, BUT: i am obsessed with this show and these babygirls. they are all i think about now? i am uninterested in any conversational topic other than men kissing on each other or what the rules of hockey are. omg the kissing is toe-curling, get ready to be like eeyuckkkk you gross bitch, but the sound editor? the foley artist??? give them a goddamn raise. i was texting with melissa last night and she was like “ugh i hate the sounds” and i was like “GIRL THAT IS THE BEST PART ARE YOU NUTS.” i bought new wired earbuds for this! so i could listen to them grunting in panoramic sound!! the kissing isn’t sloppy or gross or too wet; it’s the perfect decibel of soft, sticky lips pulling apart, of sensual whispering, of hot moaning. just thinking about it makes my heart flutter. i might have to end my years long best friendship with melissa, what in the hell is wrong with her ears?
ilya and shane going from rivals to lovers in ten minutes
remember when the twilight books first came out and your aunt sandy started dressing up like a werewolf and spending three hours in line outside the expo center, her matted brown fur broiling her alive under a punishing sun, just to get into a convention for the chance to take a photo with a besparkled edward cullen lookalike? that’s me now, except i’m wearing a yassified hockey jersey and looking up plane tickets to montreal.
1:21 of shane and ilya in the hospital
JAH BLESS THE TEENS. i barely know how to crop a meme so it doesn’t look like i stole it, and these kids are out here adding text and graphics and making jump cuts and shit? like what kinds of phones are they using? what future technologies do they have access to??? stephen spielberg found dead in a fucking ditch!
scott and kip kiss
does this show look especially degrassi: butt sex high during this episode? well, yes! but i don’t mind it. i watched the real degrassi in high school homeroom so i am intimately familiar with the vibes. it’s hard for me to take the name “kip” seriously, but that’s because it sounds like the name of a bully on the wonder years. kip is the name of one of barbie’s lesser homeboys that comes in a box with no accessories, not a human man i’m supposed to believe has a job and personal interests!!!!! scott is so gorgeous my fucking god, truly one of the hottest dudes i have ever seen in my miserable life and also a GROWN ASS MAN. an adult who knows he wants to fuck the smoothie guy and regularly leaves 50% tips on blended juice until he makes it happen. this might be a controversial take, but this is the kind of fairytale that those of us who have invisibly toiled behind the crusty counter of a mouse-infested food establishment patronized by rich idiots daydreamed about.
don’t marry svetlana to i love you
the two most important things here: hollander’s little tears shining in his glassy eyes, threatening to spill over, when he tells rozanov not to marry the russian girl; and the way he says “omg i love you so much” into rozanov’s hair while desperately clutching ilya’s head to his bosom and smooching him. babes, this is romance!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ilya rozanov being (un)intentionally funny for almost 9 minutes
it’s true, i would let rozanov slam my head hard against the plexiglass in an ice rink as many times as he wanted. not to say that hollander isn’t heartbreakingly adorable, i just like it when a man is a little mean. not fighting mean, funny mean!

WANNA KNOW HOW SICK IN THE HEAD I AM??? i read two of the six books in the series this past weekend. 700+ pages of horny gay smut in two days. i don’t read my own writing that fucking fast, but it goes down easy, like a [REDACTED] oozing down a [REDACTED]. the sex is so fucking graphic it makes me blush, and i’m disgusting. i don’t think i’ve ever seen the word “slit” so many times in my life? when you watch the show it’s like, “okay ilya is offscreen, pushing up shane’s knees, i can infer that he’s probably doing something in his butt.” and then the books are like, “HIS HUGE MASSIVE RIPPLING VEINY COCK DRIPPED HOT, SLIMY PRECUM AS ILYA PLUNGED HIS TONGUE INTO SHANE’S QUIVERING HOLE.” homegirl leaves nothing to the imagination and i am grateful for that. i’m also learning a lot, like what frotting is (DO NOT CLICK ON THAT AT YOUR JOB) and that it takes three lubed-up fingers to prepare a young man’s asshole for a nine-inch dick. i basically have an advanced degree in prostate stimulation at this point.

i’ve seen the ~discourse~ and can’t speak for all women, matter of fact i shouldn’t even speak for this one woman, but for me the thing that makes the books and show most appealing is that it’s easy to project onto these men without the reflexive analysis of, say, wondering why no one ever put their multimillion-dollar professional hockey career in jeopardy for me. no need to speculate on whether or not if i had a different body or a better personality someone would have fucked up their entire life just to put their gigantic dick in my butt in the empty building i bought for us to fuck in. it’s a relief to be a braindead voyeur, to watch my biological sons who are also my husbands kiss each other on the mouth without thinking something stupid and nasty about myself.
my friend cody cook-parrot wrote in their newsletter “i did not expect a show about closeted gay hockey players to rearrange the inner architecture of my heart” which, i think, gets right to the heart of what really bangs about this show: IT’S ROMANTIC AS HELL. it’s yearning, it’s terror, it’s unbridled lust, it’s fear of potential rejection, it’s longing, it’s quiet suffering, it’s acceptance, it’s triumphant love!!!!!

a grab bag of tiktoks and edits (i love this fandom sm):
-doll reenactment
-a russian’s adorable reaction to ilya’s monologue in ep 5
-hayden’s POV during that phone call
-rozanov’s glorious, built like a brick shithouse body
-at the cottage, starring googly-eyed pop bottles
-the boys as cats???
-the BIG OLE FREAK edit that got banned (hottttttttt and explicit bby, you’re welcome)

new guns n’ roses? in the year of our lord 2026??? bless you, gods of rock. and it’s A FREAKING SMASH. axl sounds incredible. i love when old ass singers start to get what i like to call “goat voice.” i feel like my mom when al green pivoted back to secular music in the mid-90s. like…………..you made this just for me, right?
it starts out with some extremely eighties soft rock a.m. radio keyboards, then transitions into a sexy midtempo metal love song.
i mean, this song is not for moshing, this song is not for headbanging, this song probably won’t make you throw up the devil horns, this song is a fucking ballad: “there's nothin' i can see / that could mean more to me / than what you are to me / oh, my love.” EXCUSE ME?? and then: “on the reckless sea / of vindication / your love has given me / a new way to redeem myself / when it feels like no one else / would ever care to save me.” OKAY??? then a super gorgina slash solo, he’s amazing, followed by some grade-A hardcore axl screeching at the tippy top of his register: “without your love i'd never make it / without your love i'm so alone / without you i'd never make it / without you i'd never make this thing alone.”
HELLO????? why am i not currently listening to this while writhing in my panties atop the hood of a candy apple-red vintage porsche cabriolet? i need to be somewhere on a book cover running my hands through fabio’s lustrous locks to truly appreciate this masterpiece! it transports me right back to the only place i ever want to be: 1997. i wish i could make a fucking mixtape for my crush, “nothin’” would be side A track 3. somebody make me a supercut of all my hockey sons kissing each other with this as the soundtrack, please!!!!!

A PLAYLIST FOR HAVING GAY SEX
1-800-IM-HORNY kamaiyah (2:44)
orgasmatron! avenue d (3:30)
H2hoe cupcakKe (3:05)
shake that spank rock and benny blanco (3:09)
rim job kim petras (2:44)
don’t call me baby madison avenue (3:48)
hut hut hut hut sturdy youngin and vickeelo (3:34)
if him lef lady saw (3:45)
spookie coochie doechii (2:56)
ALPHAPUSSY pixel grip (3:37)
fat, juicy, & wet sexyy red and bruno mars (2:24)
addictive truth hurts and rakim (3:46)
212 azealia banks (3:25)
fuck your face peaches (2:49)
heaven’s little bastard bbymutha (2:25)
PEGGY ceechynaa (2:39)
bongos cardi b and megan thee stallion (2:57)
girls kissing girls jucee froot and juicy j (3:49)
shibari featurette (2:31)
make you scream VTSS (2:43)
lovertits peaches (4:44)
bossa nova kash doll + tee grizzley (2:36)
GOOD PUSS cobrah (2:33)
pussy talk city girls and doja (3:38)
throat goat kim petras (2:20)
abracadabra qveen herby (2:26)
grindin’ and shakin’ yo! majesty (3:42)
talk talk charli xcx and troye sivan (2:53)
S.L.U.T. ppcocaine (1:55)
pull over trina (3:20)
tell me does she love the bass lesbians on ecstasy (4:52)
like me chase icon (1:58)
donkey punch avenue d (2:55)
WORK THIS PUSSY teyana taylor and mykki blanco (2:46)

this shit knocks, and there’s plenty of time for both foreplay and extended penetration in case hearing a repeat might fuck up your flow state. and i put a tidal mixtape together because I JUST LOVE YOU SO DAMN MUCH: a playlist for having gay sex!!!!!!!!!!!!! you don’t have to be gay, or actively getting fucked, to enjoy it. happy new year.

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HASHTAG NOT AN AD
did you know they make garrett’s popcorn: in individual bags
obsessed with: charles barkley, the funniest man alive
i keep a box of these: kleenex disposable hand towels in the car at all times
incense > candles: calmveda 1980s nag champa
obsessed with: the crazy way this guy cuts hair
still obsessed with: america’s funniest home videos
i bought this cool: skull sweatshirt from my faves thief and bandit
i also bought this cool: bikini bod sweatshirt from fashion brand company
obsessed with: the lowdown
best: birthday present for anyone with a defective butthole
or if they’d rather: shove some herbs up there
obsessed with: this amber nightlight
a different good incense: the plant guru balsam and cedar
getting back into: polymer clay earrings (copped several of these)
obsessed with: SKY DADDY
obsessed with: shane and ilya
favorite and best kalamazoo dispensary: in case you ever need to get stoned here
while you’re in town you should also go to: factory coffee and principle and saffron
favorite lotion in a brown bottle (coded for black people): nivea cocoa butter
still watching: this old ass conan bit
the best: actually cozy scarf to wear indoors without looking like a fucking asshole
obsessed with: pattern curly hair mousse
i drink a lot of this: sugar-free zero calorie mixture of chemicals made to taste like sweet tea
the only good: pain cream
this big boy: is my favorite daily fiber supplement
obsessed with: this puzzle book i’m much too dumb for
these pencils for toddlers: are very good for working on crosswords and sudokus you’re fucking up without getting a hand cramp
obsessed with: ms pat and tami roman

this year was so fucking stupid and i feel brain damaged by it, like………i can’t find anything to say other than “i guess we have to just keep on doing whatever we can until we die” and hope it doesn’t take too long. i suppose that’s the vibe i’m gonna carry into 2026? real i’m here so i don’t get fined energy. i’m tired, where is the asteroid!

BANGERS i listened to the most this year:
magnolia jj cale
been so long anita baker (i am sixty-eight years old)
you can have it all florence + the machine
lovedrug lady gaga
bone 2 pic (wit u) angie stone RIP QUEEN
guardian memorial feat lomelda
vibes don’t lie leon thomas (good nighttime writing song)
god gave me feet for dancing ezra collective (A BOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
everybody knows i’m sad marina
call it fate, call it karma the strokes
sunset andy shauf
ziplock saba
the end of the line metallica (james, i can fix u)
crown billie marten
love calls kem
bam sha klam lomelda (this twee shit really moves me)
walk all over you lola young
going in circles the friends of distinction
maestranza fleet foxes (good daytime writing song)
how could you buju banton
colossus of roads hurray for the riff raff (see them live if you can)
wasted time meshell ndegeocello (A+ yearning soundtrack)
last flowers radiohead
when i’m back on my feet again michael bolton
extermination upon a burning body (good song for letting a bitch know)

i’m not really a motivational quote girlie, but here are a few things posted around my workspace that i’m gonna take with me into the new year:
-a note from my psychiatrist that reads: what is the feeling i am seeking for myself? how do i get there?? FAKE IT!!!!!! (this advice was specifically re: confidence and self-assuredness, but it also helps to apply it to other things, like “normalness” and “intelligence” and “enthusiasm”)
-this fruity iyanla vanzant quote in 120 point font: “have the courage to be exactly who you are without apology. admit your mistakes without beating yourself up. release all shame! release all guilt! you cannot live if you are hiding behind what was. focus on what is, right now, and that is you!”
-this very helpful post-it note i wrote to myself eight months ago:

some albums i listened to in full, on repeat, for many cumulative hours this year:
madison mcferrin SCORPIO (my #1 fave this year, i think)
latin mafia todos los días todo el día
this is the kit careful of your keepers
pearl jam no code
erykah badu mama’s gun
de la soul cabin in the sky
hayley williams ego death at a bachelorette party
lady gaga mayhem
dave the boy who played the harp
musiq soulchild juslisen
sawyer hill heartbreak hysteria

some books i gave:
my lady got the book raising hare by chloe dalton, which is beautiful and incredible and i know it sounds boring but i promise it’s great. my friend mia is into romance so i got her one of my absolute favorite fucked-up love stories, cecilia rabess’ everything’s fine. sent my smart, sensitive friend a copy of wreck by catherine newman and i gave my father-in-law (i have a father-in-law????? wild) the road to tender hearts, which fucking whips and i can’t shut up about it. the girl child is seventeen and into scary shit so paul tremblay’s horror movie is the book i went with, and since we’re talking about horror you know i live for nat cassidy and gave out a few copies of his new book when the wolf comes home as well. the boy is twenty now, which is illegal and insane, and got a copy of high bias (the distorted history of the cassette tape) by marc masters because he produces and records music and i’d already gotten him that new mf doom biography for his birthday. here’s a belated christmas gift for him: if you are into eardrum-shredding ambient drone noise rock (WHO ISN’T) you can listen to his band of “ebullient sonic shapeshifters” via ferrata and/or if you are into jungle/house/dub, you might enjoy his solo DJ project nodrogolaj, which is what i would choose if he forced me to listen to his music at gunpoint. help him out, tell your friends, he is a nice boy.

resolutions !
-vacuum the dog hair out of my car
-watch a bronzer tutorial
-commit to my psychiatry homework even when it fuckin sucks
-get off my phone
-see a real live whale in the ocean
-continue to watch every tubi movie ever made

all my best to you and yours, thank you for riding this wave with me!

plaintiff: trennette from houston, texas. trennette glides into the courtroom in a pair of tight white cigarette pants and one of those v-neck sweaters with the fake camisole built in, and when the hell are we bringing those back? i hate wearing two shirts, but every now and then i wouldn’t mind serving two-shirt illusion! her sweater is black with a piece of white fabric (what is that called?) sticking out of the v with another piece of white fabric sewn under the bottom hem. she looks so chic, especially since she got a fresh silk press on her way to the studio. her hair is fucking laid, her glasses make her look extremely smart, and her undershirt isn’t bunching up or twisting around or statically sticking to her sweater because it doesn’t exist. she’s already a winner.

defendant: joseph from chicago, illinois. joseph stunts his way into the courtroom with a fresh fade/goatee trim, wearing a dark slate suit coupled with a dove grey shirt and deep grey tie. is this maybe the fanciest suit that has ever been modeled on daytime television? he looks like he’s going to church on easter! haha what if an angel had rolled the stone away from the tomb and found a $200 double-breasted wool blend suit inside? i love this, peacocking onto a fake courtroom set in your best man suit from your brother’s wedding three years ago. joseph clearly likes the way he looks, i guarantee it.

the complaint: trennette and joseph used to be in a relationship, but she broke up with him because he cheated on her and now she is suing him for an unpaid loan!

what does she want: $2000

how it went down: trennette says that she and joseph reconnected a few years ago when she was looking for an apartment and joseph happened to be the leasing agent. this is a terrible idea, even before i find out how badly he wronged her. you can’t date the dude who runs your credit check and calls all your old landlords to confirm you paid on time +/- didn’t destroy the radiator and knows both where you work and might eventually live, depending on what that slumlord with the roach problem says about your history. that’s too much of a power imbalance!! no good can come from romantically entertaining a man who already knows your credit score!!!!!

turns out trennette didn’t lease the place, but she did get a dinner invitation from the lessor. she says everything was great with joseph at first, they had fun hanging out and discovered they had a bunch of mutual friends from high school. she describes him as “a good guy, a real charmer” who would often cook dinner for her and run bubble baths. the dinners sound nice but fuck that bath business. doesn’t everybody have, like, bathroom stuff they need to do before getting in the tub? i’m not even talking about pooping and peeing although of course you need to do those things too, i mean i don’t want to brush my teeth while scrolling on my phone in the moist, swampy air created by fifty gallons of boiling water that smells like eucalyptus!

trennette says she and joseph dated for a relatively short time, and when the judge asks why they broke up she says, “probably for the same reason we shouldn’t have gotten together in the first place.” why, because he didn’t warn you about the lack of water pressure in the shower? afraid not, it seems that joseph started this new relationship with trennette without being fully disentangled from his previous one. tsk tsk! trennette says one night they were eating the dinner he’d made when his phone started blowing up, one call after another after another. he ignored the ringing phone (why! the jig is up!!) until eventually the doorbell started frantically ringing.

why is everyone dumb? here’s how i would’ve played it: okay so trennette is at my crib, relaxing on my plush couch with her feet up, gorgeous and sexy smooth jazz playing softly from a shitty bluetooth speaker. i’m in the kitchen, wearing a tuxedo, cooking this crispy chicken and brussels sprouts meal i make so often i could do it in my sleep, but she doesn’t have to know that!! i’m making a fancy salad with herbs, i’m opening whatever wine the man at the fancy liquor store told me to buy, i’m serving it on my fanciest plates at the dining table i never use with a couple taper candles i keep around for if the power goes out. we’re eating, we’re eating and we’re laughing, we’re eating and we’re laughing and we’re sipping our wine and then my phone rings, but neither of us knows it because that shit is silently on do not disturb face down on the kitchen counter. as far as trennette knows, i don’t even own a fucking cell phone! we’re having a great meal that i cooked, the conversation is off the charts because i’m so funny and charming, and i’ve retrieved my phone to switch the playlist from dinner accompanying smooth jazz to sexual relations accompanying smooth jazz, when all of a sudden our foreplay is interrupted by an impatient knock on the door. i glance at my missed calls: shit, my old bitch was blowing my shit up, and now she’s about to act a fool on my fucking porch. i tell trennette to relax, pour her a digestif, and tell her i have to run out and get one of the components i need for our dessert. i’m not making dessert, but she doesn’t fucking know that!!! bye, bitch!!!!!!! i slip outside, and the first thing i do is tell that other woman to stop banging on my fucking door has she lost her fucking mind??? i tell her that my homies are over watching the game (it doesn’t matter which one) and that she’s embarrassing me in front of my friends. “you expect me to believe that? i can hear you playing lewis taylor’s under-appreciated 2002 smash from the day we met part 2! you’re playing that for a friend you don’t wanna have sex with?” this is where i laugh like “girl you so crazy” and take her hand before gently leading her to her car, mumbling something about needing to restock the bar before halftime is over. she still doesn’t quite believe me, but what’s she gonna do, break the door down? i tuck her into her car and watch as she drives away, before getting in my car and driving around the block because of course i forgot my wallet and can’t go to the store. i return home where trennette has been sneakily looking through my stuff trying to figure out whether or not i’m a piece of shit, pretend not to notice that my dresser drawers are a little askew and my phone is locked down after too many password attempts, then we start ripping each other’s clothes off. oh, you thought she wasn’t gonna fuck me? you underestimate the power of anita baker’s been so long!!

the ruling: hold up, i wrote that fanfiction while the episode was paused and as soon as i clicked play again trennette was in the middle of saying “i looked at his phone and jotted the number down because i knew i would need it for future reference.” am i psychic? the look on joseph’s face is like she just admitted to being an alien, lolllll i guess he didn’t know. trennette says that they continued to date for four or five months until one day she was in his apartment alone and went to throw out a kleenex and saw a used condom in the wastebasket in his bedroom. that kind of arrogance is soooooo crazy to me, brother you didn’t have a mcdonald’s bag you could ball up to conceal it? was walking a few yards to the gross kitchen trash that no one would ever go through too hard??? if i have something to hide in the trash i’m cleaning out the cat box on top of it, i’m dumping out the rotted leftovers, i’m puking in there—whatever i gotta do. trennette used the number she had saved and called it, and joseph’s ex-girlfriend answered and admitted everything to her. trennette says she ended the relationship, but if she really had we wouldn’t be here seeing about this money.

joseph says the real reason they broke up is because her family “attacked him after the accident.” EXCUSE ME, WHAT ACCIDENT? joseph says that the two of them were in the car, he was driving, and they were broadsided. trennette interjects to say that joseph was driving with a goddamn attitude (my words) because she wouldn’t stay the night, and he ran a light while attempting a left turn and they were t-boned on trennette’s side. joseph starts double-talking the way people do when they’re lying, saying that the relationship wasn’t over at the time of the crash and then trennette got married behind his back (JUICY!!!!!!!!), but trennette says that she didn’t get married until much later because SHE WAS IN A GODDAMN COMA.

my brother in christ, my daddy would’ve jumped on you in the hospital, too! a coma??? shit, every generation past and present would rain fire on that hospital!!! trennette says that joseph only visited her once during the months she was in a coma and her family thought that maybe he’d caused the accident on purpose. that seems like a stretch? but i get it, your kid is comatose and the man she was with at the time she was hurt isn’t pulling any shifts at her bedside, of course your imagination cooks up the most diabolical explanations.

trennette says that she was in the hospital for five months (omg) and is permanently disfigured and disabled on her right side. and she still loaned him money after this? god bless, it couldn’t be me. trennette says she prayed on it and decided to talk to joseph again because she had empathy for how he must be feeling after having caused another person permanent damage. i’d be in a psych ward somewhere if i put somebody in a coma, but does joseph actually feel guilty? it doesn’t seem like he does!

they were in the process of repairing a friends-only relationship when joseph fell on some hard times. trennette was doing pretty good, so she offered to loan him money, with the caveat that he had to provide her with a promissory note. joseph says they spent the day together and went out for a lovely dinner, after which they went to his house and “one thing led to another.” he says that when he woke up the next morning trennette had left two thousand dollars on his nightstand, like he was a gigolo. OKAY SIR i, too, have seen the movie boomerang. get outta here!!!!! joseph says that he felt great, like she was saying “job well done!” trennette asks him if that were the case, why did he then sign a promissory note? (do you guys think he signed it with his penis)

joseph says he has no recollection of signing a promissory note but come on man, this is a lady who wrote down a random number calling your phone, you think she doesn’t have a copy of that note in every room of her house??? trennette gives greg the note, he gives it to joseph, asking if that is indeed his signature, then joseph stares intently at the sheet of paper for a few seconds before sighing heavily. yeah, just like we thought. judgment for the plaintiff!!!!!!!!!

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “so what you’re saying is, he was fixing up bubble baths for more women than just you?”

*bangs gavel*

stuff some stockings!

i got into de la soul in high school because tim herman (i hope he’s somewhere thriving) dubbed me a tape of stakes is high. obviously i’d heard “oodles of o’s” and “me myself and i” but stakes is high really ignited something in me.
the first concert i ever went to was de la soul at the house of blues in chicago in 98. pretty sure the rest of the lineup featured big pun, eminem, and common, which is absurd. that ticket would cost three hundred bucks (before fees) today, and since i was eighteen at the time i’m 100% certain i did not spend more than twenty-five dollars on it, because i never had more than twenty-five dollars at a time.
i was working the closing shift at judy’s every night, so i got a ticket to the late show (remember being young and fun? neither do i) and then circled and circled my little rusty ford escort around dearborn and kinzie as the clock rapidly approached midnight, finally parked that piece of shit illegally in front of harry caray’s, then somehow stayed for ¾ of the show without getting ticketed (god’s favorite??) or towed.
i don’t remember a lot of specifics about the show (who opened? what songs did they do? how many plastic cups of diet coke did i drink because i was underage? we will likely never know) but i do very specifically remember wearing, despite the fact that it was summer at the time, this exact same orange sherpa GAP vest because it was the only item of clothing i had that i thought might pass for “hiphop.” i’d hoped it would make me look less “i work in a kitchen” and more “i know all the lyrics to that song by company flow,” but i don’t know if it worked because i was boiling and ditched it near the bathroom shortly after i got inside. anyway, i miss trugoy but the new de la album seriously fucks!
a few more new hiphop records i been on:
dave the boy who played the harp
little sims lotus
wale everything is a lot.

some links i’ve sent
-the funniest video i have ever seen
-chris paul got fired (??) the other day, which means i had to bust out deandre jordan dunks on brandon knight for 5 minutes straight because the announcer says “here comes chris paul” approximately 572 times
-my lady asked if i needed anything from walgreens and i texted her this and this (iconic duo)
-the goon squad loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation by daniel kolitz
-tokyo toni wisdom
-jump scares 2026 horror book list
-dead man’s wire trailer
-does my lady agree that i probably have this disease i first heard about two days ago?
-david byrne tiny desk
-with anti-consumerism, women bear the burden from more to hate, written by the god kate manne
-literally me and my guy steve reidell
-silky nutmeg ganache vs jimbo
-i was trying to convince someone stupid of the insane charisma and sexual energy just radiating from big papi so i texted them this clip and my god, imagine those teeth on your bare skin???? oh crumbs, i think i’ve sprung a leak!
-i bought a drop dead gorgeous DVD off ebay (not this one, though)
-this take, with which i 100% agree
-mike epps on kevin garnett’s podcast
-the trailer for mother mary because in this house we worship anne hathaway
-mo’nique!!!!!!!! the only comedian

industry season four trailer! we back!!!!!!!! finally, a reason to live. gun to my head i couldn’t tell you what the fuck this show is about, and four seasons in i’m absolutely not about to learn. i simply cannot wait to be reunited with the don dada.

i hope you had a nice thanksgiving and didn’t fistfight anyone you’re related to. we outsource the meats and just go absolutely fucking crazy making the sides, which is so much less stressful??? i’m not cooking a fucking turkey ever in my life. turkey tastes like napkins and the only way i’ll touch it is if it’s mixed with black people dressing and canned cranberry sauce from the store. do not approach me with an intact cranberry straight from the bog, i will kill you. we get a smoked turkey from these guys and my lady orders a fancy pre-cooked internet ham, but i don’t really mess with that either because there’s corn pudding, sweet potato casserole, and the aforementioned only kind of dressing worth eating. have i eaten the brutally sharp-edged, fresh herbs that never meld with the rest of the dish, big ass crunchy pieces of hairy celery kind? i am from the suburbs, so of course i have. but that shit is against god and is not allowed in my home.
i was flipping through the food and wine thanksgiving edition a couple months ago and saw that this year they suggested making a pickle tray instead of a basic charcuterie board, and since we had a couple real pickle heads coming over i decided i needed to go overboard and make* a huge one.
dill crackers
dill havarti
pickled cauliflower
pumpkin spice pickles???????????
miss vickie’s spicy pickle chips
fermented okra
pickled sausage
cornichons
cucumber kimchi
pickled carrots
pickled asparagus
greek olives with mediterranean herbs
pickle balls
*i didn’t technically make the relish try, i just went crazy and bought all the weirdest pickled foods i could find. also i didn’t even eat any of this stuff because park brought her famous clam dip, and as a notorious fish bitch i simply could not tear myself away!

THIS NEW ROSALIA HOLY SHIT MAN

i went to tiktok to look at some fat bitches in cool clothes, and i kept encountering these videos that wanted to teach me how to dress for my body shape and i was like, dress for my WHAT. apparently “bag of wet dirty laundry” is not an actual body type, so i was instructed by this tiktok lady (i am sorry to her, i do not really understand how to work my way around the app and can’t find her now to share her with you) to use her body type calculator so i could figure it out. turns out i am a PEAR and i will be dressing accordingly: in a dirty green skin with a twig sticking out of my head and one of those chic protective foamy packing sleeves.

this holiday season, i am thankful for erykah badu. i’ve been listening to new amerykah volume one a lot lately (it’s a pretty perfect “soggy leaves on the ground, dark at 4pm” kinda album) and the algorithm noticed that and sent me a couple gems on youtube:
a not tiny desk tiny desk
her echos 19 show (insane)
10 things she can’t live without
her vogue magazine life in looks (most style, best dressed, etc!)
also the new issue of my fave mother tongue is out now, and e badu is on the cover looking gorge and in the pages sounding insane (complimentary)!

books i’ve recently purchased that i look forward to getting into:
to smithereens rosalyn drexler when rosa, a depressed and drifting twenty-something, meets paul, a middling art critic, an off-kilter romance commences. paul longs to be dominated by physically powerful women and convinces rosa to fulfill one of his fantasies: that she become a wrestler. soon, rosa joins a women’s wrestling team and embarks on a tour of the south, befriends her horny teammates and their jealous boyfriends, and learns to hold her own among a crew of seedy coaches and greedy promoters. through wrestling, rosa learns to articulate what kind of life she wants, and to wriggle free of paul’s attempts to possess her.
why i bought it: DUH sexy lady wrestler

moderation elaine castillo girlie delmundo is the greatest content moderator in the world, and despite the setbacks of financial crises, climate catastrophe, and a global pandemic, she’s going places: she’s getting a promotion. now thanks to her parent company paragon’s purchase of fairground—the world’s preeminent virtual reality content provider—she’s on the way to becoming an elite VR moderator, playing in the big leagues and, if her enthusiastic bosses are to be believed, moderating the next stage of human interaction. despite the isolation that virtual reality requires from colleagues, friends, and family, the unbelievable perks of her new job mean she can solve a lot of her family’s problems with money and mobility. she doesn’t have to think about the childhood home they lost back in the bay area, or history at all—she can just pay any debts that come due. but when she meets william cheung, playground’s wry, reticent co-founder (now chief product officer) and slowly unearths some of his secrets, and finds herself somehow falling in love, she’ll learn that history might be impossible to moderate and the future utterly impossible to control.
why i bought it: i love elaine’s work, she has never let me down

the book of luke lovell holder following the car accident that ended his football career and left his body scarred, twenty-two-year-old luke griffin joins the cast of endeavor, a new competition-based reality show that pits the tabloids’ darlings against one another in tasks of endurance and problem solving. at first, he thrives, effortlessly forming friendships and even a romantic relationship that he thinks will last a lifetime. but luke has aspirations far bigger than the show’s million-dollar prize, and soon a series of betrayals leads to irreversible tragedy, changing the course of his and his fellow contestants’ lives forever.
why i bought it: gay man married to a cheating politician who jettisons his life to compete on an mtv challenge-esque reality show??? obvs cooked up in a lab specifically for me (and for my girl lauren, for whom i once purchased a cameo from TJ LAVIN, real sicko behavior)

the white hot quiara alegria hudes april is a young mother raising her daughter in an intergenerational house of unspoken secrets and loud arguments. her only refuge is to hide away in a locked bathroom, her ears plugged into an ambient soundscape, and a mantra on her lips: dead inside. that is, until one day, as she finds herself spiraling toward the volcanic rage she calls the white hot, a voice inside her tells her to just…walk away. she wanders to a bus station and asks for a ticket to the furthest destination; she tells the clerk to make it one-way. that ticket takes her from her philly home to the threshold of a wilderness and the beginning of a nameless quest—an accidental journey that shakes her awake, almost kills her, and brings her to the brink of an impossible choice.
why i bought it: because alicia menendez told me to!!

lightbreakers aja gabel maya, an artist, and noah, a quantum physicist, share an insatiable curiosity about the world. but their happy marriage has a shadow over it: serena, the child noah had with his first wife, who died before she turned four. when noah is invited by the janus project to unravel the secrets of time travel, he jumps at the opportunity. at a laboratory deep in the texas desert, he begins participating in a dangerous experiment that could result in something he thought impossible: seeing his daughter again. meanwhile, maya embarks on a journey back to her own past in japan, and to a formative lover who once shattered her heart. as noah and maya grapple with hope and despair, new information emerges that the experiments might not be exactly what they seems.
why i bought it: i liked her book the ensemble

a few bangersssssss to see you on your merry way
divinize rosalía
don’t let the devil killer mike feat el-p (PUT THIS ON IN THE CAR AND GO FAST)
fairchild dave
EN EFF de la soul feat black thought
where to start wale
i can make you dance zapp and roger (is this the greatest video of all time???)
bridging the gaps black eyed peas
flood little simz
open invite teyana taylor and kaytranada
attack me with your love cameo
telephone erykah badu (PUT THIS ON AT NAPTIME)

my 2025 gift guide!

i feel like a fucking dinosaur saying this, BUT: is anyone else under the age of 97 watching abby phillip’s latenight cnn show, newsyelling??? i love watching people belligerently shouting political takes past one another where no one really listens and nothing ever gets solved and no one is satisfied and everybody is seething with visible smoke coming out of their ears every time the host tries to shut them the fuck up so the audience can watch some keytruda ads. i love this shit so much. first of all, abby is beautiful and her voice??? not that she needs career advice from a deadbeat with no job but she could probably making a killing reading romance audiobooks on the side if she wanted to. second, if i absolutely have to hear mainstream news, i prefer it filtered through screaming maniacs who are up past their bedtime.

slinky slithery sexy r&b banger currently on repeat: what if i by aunt comet!!!!!!!!

my friend bryan washington has a new book out called palaver and hot damn this motherfucker is a finalist for the national book award! i think that’s a really big deal? i have some fancy writing friends but most of the writers i’m cool with are the same kind of normal idiot as i am and none of us ever gets nominated for shit, maybe a goodreads award if anything but probably not even that, so it’s very easy for us to be friends. lucky for me that bryan is both brilliant and extremely nice, otherwise i would have to end this friendship immediately. anyway he recently did a by the book questionnaire in which he mentioned the frittata recipe i wrote in my book meaty (ho ho ho!! a wonderful holiday gift for your derelict friends and family!) and my man lucas texted me like I NEED THAT RECIPE and here’s a thing about me: we can be friends, super close ones as a matter of fact, even if you don’t read my books. i could’ve texted back “brother, turn to page ___” but i’m not a fucking asshole, so i’m posting it here free of charge. let’s see if this motherfucker opens my emails:

easy and delicious instagram frittata (for slobs)
ingredients:
6-8 eggs
1 red pepper, cored and seeded and sliced into thin strips
1 onion, sliced not diced because it looks more elegant that way
a potato
a couple handfuls of whatever grated cheese you have leftover from your last nacho day
some bagged spinach or kale unless you’re the kind of mature and responsible adult who has that shit growing outside your well-tended home
maybe some bacon if you want, or ham could be good too!
salt and pepper, rosemary and/or basil if you like that kind of thing
milk?? cream???
oil or butter (it doesn’t really matter but i prefer butter)

i am not an egg person. egg people enjoy thick, slimy yolks splooging over their tongues as they take a bite of their fried egg sandwiches; they like rivulets of yellow slime cascading from beneath their hamburger buns; they squeal with delight as a puddle of neon goo oozes from their freshly poached eggs to settle wetly around the edges of their avocado toasts. but they are so cheap and people always buy them and “throwing together a frittata” sounds way better than saying “sunnyside up eggs make me want to die” if they are the only option for food on hand.

one crack the eggs into a bowl, add a healthy glug of whole milk or cream, and beat them with a whisk. if owning a whisk is the kind of thing that is too fancy for you, throw this book in the trash.

two add a couple pinches of salt and a grind or two of pepper to the eggs. i never measure because am i really supposed to grind the pepper mill over a teaspoon and see how much i can catch? i’m not doing that! just shake your sea salt container a few times and grind the pepper three or four times so that you can see black specks floating around after you stir it again to mix it all up.

three suddenly remember that you forgot the actual first steps, which are: wash and slice your potatoes into thin discs (use a mandolin and watch your fingers); wash and slice your red pepper into skinny strips; slice your onion but not into chunks because chunks are weird-feeling in eggs. here’s how i do it: i cut off both the top and the bottom of the onion so that i have a flat surface to balance them on, then i take a sharp paring knife and cut from top to bottom while turning the onion like an eighth of an inch at a time, until it all falls apart and looks like a bunch of rainbows scattered across the cutting board.

now is about the time i feel like i’ve accomplished a lot? so i usually take a break, which usually involves admiring my beautiful pile of uniformly cut vegetables while drinking a coffee and wondering whether or not this will actually be worth it in the end. let’s relax with a little babygirl marshawn lynch conducting the houston symphony orchestra, which might be the most delightful thing i have ever seen.

four i always forget until it’s too late that greens should probably be cleaned, so now is a good time to find whatever moldering kale or spinach is hanging out at the bottom of your crisper drawer and dump it into a bowl that is 1 cup distilled white vinegar to 3 cups cold water and soak it for two minutes, then rinse it in a colander and maybe shake it a little to get some of the water out. i know it feels like a lot of work and i’m not going to lie, i’ve probably eaten 47 e. coli salads since last tuesday but now that i’m thinking about it if you gotta eat greens at least maybe try not to die from them.

five set your responsibly washed old salad aside and heat up some oil or butter in a deep cast iron pan and preheat your oven to 400 degrees (cue juvie’s 400 degreez). cook the potatoes first for five minutes over medium heat, moving them around a little bit so they don’t stick or burn. then add the onions and peppers and cook for another five minutes, moving everything around but not so roughly that you turn it into gross mush. at this point you could add some crumbled cooked bacon but that adds a series of extra steps that I’m not gonna do while hungover on a sunday? so it’s a no from me, dawg. i might chop some deli ham and toss it in there if i have it but again probably not. anyway if you’re putting meat in this chop it up and throw it in now, also at some point during this process sprinkle some salt and pepper on the whole thing.

six add two teaspoons of chopped rosemary or basil and a heaping cup of shredded cheese dregs to your beaten eggs (remember them?!) and stir, then flatten out the vegetables in the hot pan as best you can and pour the egg mixture over it. shake off your ripped up chard or kale or spinach and kinda just gently press it into everything; don’t add so much that it doesn’t mix in, eyeball the right amount. scroll through your insta and look at pretty brunch spreads for inspiration.

seven bake it for twenty minutes, give or take, until it’s set. keep an eye on it starting around the fifteen minute mark. i like mine a little brown on top because jiggly eggs in my mouth make me want to cry, but you can eat yours however you want.

if you’re thinking you want to post a picture of it on the internet, i’m not an expert on how to pose food to ensure maximum jealousy from people you went to high school with twenty years ago, but i’ll try:
-use a trivet (i bought these wool monstera trivets from graf lantz yearssss ago and we still use them all the time and they look cool as hell) so you can set the pan on your nicest table surface without fear of ruining it. oh, you eat on tv trays but you have a rustic chest of drawers next to your bed? you better run that skillet upstairs, girl!
-so people know that you actually made it with your own hands, scatter some eggshells and salmonella around the countertops so your online friends know that you don’t go to the farmers market just to take pictures of purple carrots. (i go to the farmers market just to take pictures of purple carrots.)
-buy one nice plate. it doesn’t even have to be a fancy plate, just get something that looks good through the lens of a dying iphone. spaghetti-o’s look like high art in a gleaming crate and barrel cereal bowl.
-nice napkins can serve the dual purpose of both making you feel like a capable adult and also making pictures of your revolting home food look more palatable. plus they’re pretty cheap and if you buy one of each color/style no one has to know that you don’t have the whole set unless they swing by demanding to look at your linen cabinet, but even then you can just brush them off like “who cares about matching?” and their eyes will widen in awe at how breezy and bohemian you are when really you just wanted a prop for some gluten-free brownies.
i have this dream of working up the courage one day to post pictures of the remnants food that i’ve already eaten: miserable looking hot dog butts, dried soup ring crusts on a tower of stacked bowls, gnawed-on breadsticks, the last two pieces of cereal floating in some rancid milk skin. until then i guess i’ll just be over here artfully setting my fork at a 45 degree angle next to this cassoulet i made for the express purpose of hopefully impressing that guy who once laughed at me for pronouncing the T.

i just got these beautiful pants that i ordered during a bout of menopausal insomnia: was it a mistake? will i ever wear them anywhere?? sometimes my brain

speaking of lying awake in the middle of the night staring at the ceiling, one of the things i find myself illest prepared for in middle age is adjusting to the shift from sex attention (fun, exciting) to mom attention (weird, bad). this absolute fucking cutie pie at the dispensary told me that he liked my hoodie and i look so cool and my first thought was you can’t even see my titties in this rag?????? but then he asked me if i had ever heard of “south bend, indiana” and i was like OHHH THIS IS MY SON. he’s not hitting on me, he’s just gobsmacked that my old ass had that shit on. like when you find out that your social studies teacher wears jordans on the weekend or the time i casually said “gooning” at the dinner table one night the kids had friends over and they all simultaneously fell out their chairs. when someone is interested in you because you’re like……………..a “cool older lady” rather than because they want to bend you over? feels weird! i don’t love it!!

fully obsessed with these songs: good ol’ days / zissou / dream girl in shibuya / negative self talk / i won’t quit on you / ego death at a bachelorette party / blood bros ALL BY HAYLEY WILLIAMS (the entire record is so, so great)

my teeth are rotted and disgusting and dealing with them has maybe been the worst part of my life, and after an extremely long break from it a few months ago i decided that maybe it was time to get back in the dentist’s chair for a checkup. i’m not gonna bore you with the specifics, that they found [redacted] cavities and prescribed me toothpaste and last week i had to have an insane surgery on my bottom jaw, let’s focus instead on the beautiful chocolates i sent as a gift to the three different dentists that had to deal with my gross teeth: gorgeous and delicious compartes. pretty sure i was first introduced to them in LA, which is a crime because no one there eats real food; thank god you can get them shipped to the fat parts of the country. i can’t ever let anything tasty touch my teeth ever again for as long as i live, but i do enjoy sending the kind of gift that lets the recipient know i have taste? and a working credit card???

in 2026 i’m gonna use my cookbooks more

BITCH!!! i wish matthew rhys would put his beast in me. goddamn he looks good on this fucking show!!!!!! i would never have previously thought of myself as the type to ride for a psychopath but his sinister energy is so appealing to me. i would let him walk me on a leash like one of his terrifying dogs. i also watched all her fault which was great but i read the book a couple weeks ago, which really is just a dumb thing to do. i read a bunch of andrea mara’s books this fall (all her fault, one click, it should have been you, no one saw a thing) and they go down james patterson smooth, i just should’ve waited until after i watched the show for this one because my brain can’t help but nitpick the differences between the book and the show and that sucks. we started watching pluribus and i’m sorry, BUT: it’s giving smiling zombie severance. i don’t like a show i have to figure out, i want to watch bronwyn fistfight heather gay while wearing an inflatable horse costume, not do mental algebra trying to figure out what’s going on in a forty-five minute television program. plus the main lady seems like such a fucking asshole? i keep watching it like, when is jack abbott gonna swoop down from mars and kill this mean bitch? robin and i are watching welcome to derry through our fingers with our hoodies pulled down over our faces (that might just be me) and it’s horrifying for real but also so good. we watched that netflix documentary that’s put together from bodycam footage (a real heartbreaker) and we’re also still churning through the summer i turned pretty. i’m not sure what the consensus is among the youths (the show’s intended audience and therefore the only demographic whose opinions matter) but babe i am fully team jeremiah. don’t worry, i googled to make sure he’s not actually a child before deciding he’s handsome. we’re about to start season three but are there actually people rooting for conrad? that pained and tortured thing is so nasty to me, i hate a mysterious man! but don’t listen to me, in my (old, cranky) estimation steven is the hottest young man on this show, but most of you are not ready for that conversation!!!!!!! my lady and i are crying laughing watching snl every week but we watch it early sunday morning instead of going to church, because who the hell is awake in the middle of a saturday night? i love eddie murphy down and while i haven’t yet watched his new documentary i have rewatched tower heist several times over the past few weeks and why didn’t that shit win an oscar? it’s so stupid (complimentary) and hilarious. i’ve fallen behind on trailers but i can’t wait to watch this gay ass hockey show and this charming romcom and if i had legs i’d kick you and a documentary about the ‘85 bears??? my body is also very ready to watch cm punk become a drooling vampire!!!

a banger to vibe to until we meet again: communicate feat ravyn lenae mick jenkins

plaintiff: rachaundra from springfield, illinois. springfield is the state capitol, as every eighth grader who was forced into a fieldtrip to rub abraham lincoln’s golden nose is well aware. rachaundra glides into the courtroom in a black cowl shirts, the kind where the cowl is so loose from a distance it looks like a v-neck? jail. put them in the same cell as boatnecks and cold shoulders! rachaundra has a fresh white manicure, glittering diamonds in her ears, and hair that can only be described as: bayangg.

defendant: ebonie from springfield, illinois. ebonie is serving director of the children’s choir at mount zion ame church realness in a soft 80s pantsuit (remember those? like, an electric teal, super floppy, too-big feminine suit? god, take me back) over a gorgeous silk shell covered in an eyewateringly-bright auntie print.

the complaint: rachaundra says she and ebonie got into a fight, and ebonie tried hitting rachaundra with her car, so now she is suing!

what does she want: $4491 countersuit filed! ebonie would like $2864 for car damages, which is the funniest thing i’ve ever heard in my life. imagine the tememrity to drive your car at someone and then sue them for the damage to your car? what did rachaundra do, get too much blood and brain on it???

how it went down: rachaundra says that she met ebonie back in 2010, when she started dating [ebonie’s] child’s father. okay, the human bumper cars of it all is beginning to make more sense knowing that. rachaundra said there were no issues between them until ebonie tried to get back with dude a few years later. at the same time he got incarcerated (they haven’t said his name!), ebonie started “going around town telling people” and posting on social media that she and the young man in question were sleeping together.

who are you guys friends with on instagram? i follow too many people but thankfully my algorithm mostly shows me the meme pages i like, but i don’t know that i’d need to follow my man’s ex? everyone should be cool, because kids don’t deserve to live in uncool circumstances of their parents’ creation, but does that extend to what bitch’s tweets you look at?? how did they even get to that point???

ebonie says that not only has she never posted about messing around with her child’s father online, but clarifies that she in fact does not want him back, thank you very much. ebonie says that their conflict stems from rachaundra’s jealousy of her easygoing relationship with (let’s name him something fun that is absolutely not his name) bob, and that they haven’t been romantic with each other in ages, they’re just good coparents. greg asks rachaundra if she has any proof of bob’s cheating and, if so, what happened when she asked him about it. that’s right, gregory devonte mathis says WOMEN’S RIGHTS. rachaundra says the proof she found was text messages from ebonie to bob, and that when rachaundra confronted him about them, he went and confronted ebonie. okay then!

ebonie contends that not of this is true, that rachaundra is the one who is harassing her. ebonie says that at one point rachaundra would wake up every morning and immediately tag her in multiple nasty posts on facebook or instagram. that dedication to her wrath is admirable, especially for an amateur hater such as myself. i don’t think i even brush my teeth with that kind of frequency. rachaundra denies it, but luckily ebonie has several printed out status update sheets™ tucked into her accordion of truth™. the judge reads them out loud but they’re heavily bleeped and the camera isn’t on his face, but in one of them rachaundra warns the men of springfield to be careful what kind of bitches they have kids with and tagged ebonie. she also tagged her in another in which she called her children ugly (do they not? share half their dna?? with your man???) and another where she just typed a bunch of fist emojis, also with her tagged. that last one is fucking funny. like a virtual “put up your dukes.” ol’ i’m gonna give you a knuckle sandwich ass.

rachaundra says that on halloween her boyfriend threw a get together at his father’s house, to which ebonie and her witness in court showed up uninvited. the boyfriend and his father asked them to leave, but they refused to do so quietly. ebonie says she had no idea that bob was even having a party, she was just there so that the witness (her cousin) could talk to her boyfriend, who was inside. when ebonie refused to leave the premises rachaundra stepped between ebonie and bob to confront her, and their ensuing argument “got physical for a couple of minutes.” a couple minutes is really a long fucking time if you count the seconds in punches. the built-in two-minute timer on my electric toothbrush feels interminable and all i’m doing is sitting there daydreaming, i cannot imagine spending that same amount of time repeatedly getting duffed over and over in my fucking face????

after someone broke the two of them apart ebonie pulled out a can of mace and maced rachaundra’s friend which, i’m sorry, makes me a little skeptical about her claim that she wasn’t interested in having a fight. rachaundra says that after she maced her friend, ebonie jumped into her car and attempted to hit rachaundra, and as she ducked behind her nearby parked car for safety, ebonie laid her foot on the gas and drove straight into it. this is the kind of person i am in my fantasies, zoned out in the middle of the night with my robot toothbrush: a woman who would see a bitch she hates on the other side of a 2500-pound car and try to run her over through that sonofabitch. how exciting must that have been to watch! that’s movie of the week type shit!! rachaundra says that ebonie backed up and then re-smashed into her car several more times—reverse-ram! reverse-ram! reverse-ram!—until she tuckered herself out. again, while i could never actually be ebonie for real, how great would it be to have the balls on this lady for maybe like forty-five minutes or so? a couple hours at most?? i wouldn’t want to live like this forever (frankly, it’s unsustainable!) but i’d take an afternoon of reckless abandon armed with a full mace can and zero consideration for consequences. i mean who among us could resist???

ebonie drove off and rachaundra called the police, and she’s brought the report with her to court today. the judge asks ebonie if this is true and she laughs (what a gangster) before essentially saying “kind of.” ebonie contends that rachaundra was actually the one going after her, and the only reason she hit her car was because she was trying to escape. ebonie says that as soon as she and her cousin arrived, rachaundra and her friends started coming after them with weapons (a knife, a hennessey bottle) and seemed like they’d been spoiling for a fight before they even got there. when greg asks ebonie why she didn’t just leave she says that she didn’t want to leave her cousin behind.

judge mathis isn’t really buying ebonie’s innocent act, and he asks cousin charlene (finally, a secondary character gets a goddamn name!) if she really needed to talk to her baby daddy during the halloween party of ebonie’s sworn enemy, or if she suggested it so they could go over there and set some shit off. charlene says that she did actually, she needed to go to the house to get some money from her dude. greg hates this lady instantly and i’m not quite sure why, but it’s clear that he has decided in the fourteen seconds he’s known her that this is all her fault because she really didn’t have an urgent need to talk to him, she just wanted to go over and get in homeboy’s business and be messy.

okay charlene is dismissed (what if these girls are lowkey the good wife and ebonie just brought charlene as a misdirect because she knew the judge would offload the blame onto her) and ebonie says that she did mace rachaundra’s friend, and when she did she accidentally maced herself. apparently rachaudra seized the opportunity and jumped on ebonie, then she and the friend tag-teamed emily until bob came over and broke up the fight. ebonie gets in her car to leave but rachaundra is wound up and dives into her open car door to keep fighting. ebonie, who was still blinded by secondhand mace, tried to flee and ended up hitting rachaundra’s car a couple times in the process.

i thought ebonie’s countersuit was going to be for car damages incurred during this little incident but thank the god of all hallow’s eve it’s somehow even better: one day ebonie was driving around with bob and they happened to see rachaundra while they were in the car. rachaundra immediately started tailing them. bob asked ebonie to drop him off at his dad’s house, but when they arrived he wouldn’t get out of the car because rachaundra had pulled up right behind them. eventually bob told ebonie to just keep driving and when she did rachaundra crashed her car into theirs. is this a real thing we are doing now, throwing cars around like nerf balls? i wouldn’t even gently toss my phone at someone and risk damaging it (my apple care expired years ago), how are they so cavalier about playing bumper cars with real ones???

the ruling: the judge asks rachaundra for her side and she says, “yep, my boyfriend lied to me about where he was and who he was with so i followed her to confront him.” okay, my sister in christ, wow. most people would at least send a foreboding “we gotta talk” text to make them sweat a little before they resorted to direct surveillance, but these girls are too tuff for that, i guess! she says that when ebonie eventually noticed her behind them she slammed on her brakes, forcing rachaundra to crash into the back of her car. these stories are so wildly different, i can’t stop fucking laughing.

ebonie gives the judge a witness statement from a person who lives on the street where the accident took place, and he basically says that rachaundra’s black suv hit the back of ebonie’s beige sedan, twice. but if ebonie brake-checked her is it actually rachaundra’s fault? never gonna find out the answer to that question, because rachaundra ended up in jail over this and greg wants to talk about that. he asks if ebonie went to jail for the damage she caused, and rachaundra says, “no because she was on the run for child endangerment, she had a warrant and they couldn’t find her because she was on the run.” what is this, one of my beloved $7000-budget tubi classics?

ebonie tries to gloss over the police report of it all, but it turns out that she was also charged and booked? rachaundra says their dueling court cases got continuance after continuance until finally the judge told the two parties he would dismiss them if they promised to fuck off and leave each other alone. greg calls bullshit and says the legal system doesn’t work like that, and he presses until rachaundra mumbles the words “suspended sentence” and the judge yells, “SO YOU ADMITTED YOU DID IT.” he turns to ebonie and asks if she too received a suspended sentence, and she hems and haws before finally saying, “i admitted to them that i did it” and greg snaps, “SO YOU DID.” in a kind of dad rage, judge mathis yells that they’ve wasted their time arguing in his courtroom over a man who couldn’t even be bothered to show up and he is now suspending this case, judgment for no one. that was a mean trick, but don’t worry here’s your treat: you can watch the tuca and bertie halloween episode i wrote in bed on your computer!!

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “‘girl please?’ it ain’t no girl please, it’s girl bye. go sit down!”

*bangs gavel*

ps, 300 of these??? i should get a life!

plaintiff: laura from palatine, illinois. laura slides into the courtroom wearing one of my least favorite articles of clothing: the dreaded popover blouse. i have never, ever seen one that looks good. and that’s not a knock on gorgeous laura, it is a failure of design. for those who are unfamiliar and unwilling to google (i get it), what i’m talking about is basically a feminine button down shirt but without most of the buttons. on purpose. you get a collar and a v-neck and weird darts in the best and usually some kind of curved hem that looks weird when you tuck it in? and, if you’re lucky, you get some stretch built in somewhere so it doesn’t explode off your body like the hulk when you turn your torso. conceptually i understand the idea of a dress shirt that solves the breasts-straining-against-the-material-bra-revealing-button-gap dilemma, but sadly this is not it. laura’s is neon raspberry and is equipped with bracelet-length sleeves, another useless invention, unless you really love showing off your wrist cleavage.

defendant: antonio from palatine, illinois. antonio is my kind of fella, a burly teddy bear type with a mustache and glasses and a nice smile. he’s wearing a white dress shirt and blue tie under a deep navy sweater vest, the same outfit as your elementary school principal!

the complaint: laura says she was impressed with antonio when they met and they subsequently got engaged, but she claims he became controlling and isolated her and now she’s suing for the down payment on a car!

what does she want: $3000.

how it went down: laura says she and antonio were introduced by a mutual friend and antonio macked to her by telling her he’d tried out multiple times for american idol. first of all, she should be suing katy perry. laura says antonio used to sing to her all time, like “on [her] birthdays and stuff.” listen if we’re dating and you can sing, i should be hearing you singing while washing the dishes or taking the dog out, not waiting for your annual jazzed-up rendition of the birthday song??? you know how absolutely humiliating it is to be sitting there waiting for people to stop singing “happy birthday” to you, imagine what it must be like to sit through his version. like this but way worse, and probably without the benefit of a guitar. what are you supposed to do while the person you intend to marry ~performs~ the birthday song in their best fantasia barrino impersonation (“happy BIRTH-daaAaaAAaay, ooOoOOooOOoh happy biIIIiiiIiIIIiiiiirth-dayyyyyyyyyyy” i dare you to tell me you can’t hear this in your head) but BAD? do you just………….smile politely and pray for it to be over?? how is one expected to comport herself under such mortifying circumstances? i’d throw myself out the fucking window. but maybe don’t listen to my ass, this is the only happy birthday song i recognize.

the judge asks her, “can he sing?” and, with a sly smile, antonio interjects, “YES I CAN” and what is the medical term for that feeling of anticipatory secondhand embarrassment that just wrapped its slimy tentacles around my throat? i’ve never hit pause on a video faster, because if he sings in this courtroom today i cannot hear it. if this man CROONS in front of judge GREG MATHIS i will have to go lie down in the street. phew, he doesn’t sing (thank you god), and when the judge asks him how far he got in the show antonio says, “only the second round, because they loved my voice but hated my appearance.” okay well, i still don’t want him to burst into song but fuck them he’s cute!

greg asks laura “would you have dated him if he wasn’t on american idol or were you banking on his future success?” as she is sweetly answering “of course,” antonio is on the other side of the room loudly saying “i wouldn’t have dated her if i’d known she was a stripper” and i’m sorry, WHAT. this woman looks like a preschool teacher, i never would’ve guessed that dumb blouse was hiding an open-cup bra and pierced nipples, and boy do i love this unexpected plot twist. also, is my man sure “getting paid to look hot in skimpy underwear” is that much more shameful than “didn’t even make it to the televised portion of a singing show people stopped caring about ten years ago?” imagine bragging about being on american idol when you didn’t even get to meet ryan seacreast in the lobby. laura tries valiantly to carry on (she liked him for his personality, which is kind of her to say) but judge mathis lives for mess, so he stops her to ask about her pole dancing career. she refuses to take the bait, saying, “that was a long time ago, before i went to the military” and there’s no faster way to shut shit down than invoking the united states army, sir yes sir!

blazing right ahead, laura says that antonio proposed to her and the way he did it was “incredibly corny.” the judge loves that, so he asks her to explain. her explanation is a little confusing to me but the gist of it is that antonio asked her to download an app and when she put her finger on it “will you marry me” popped up on the screen. i don’t think that sounds so bad (remember when people were into flash mobs?) until i hear antonio’s response, which is basically “i didn’t want to do it in a restaurant.” yeah i get it, and nothing is worse than being publicly serenaded by a man full of steak while he wobbles on his knees, but i feel like those aren’t the only two options? on the spectrum of popping the question there has to be something between on a phone or choking on the ring hidden in your dessert that could satisfy them both. laura says she would’ve preferred that antonio use his words rather than his iphone, but then says that she said yes anyway. i wonder did she text him her answer? swipe right in the app?? send him a thumbs up emoji???

laura says that after they got engaged antonio let his jekyll out and became controlling, forbidding her from hanging out with her girlfriends (who would obviously encourage her to cheat on him), having guyfriends (with whom she would definitely cheat on him), and even her family (gotta keep her away from them sexy cousins, i guess). the judge looks at antonio like MAN WHAT THE HELL and antonio says, “well, considering her former profession…” and fuck him all the way to hell with that. for one thing, dancers don’t have sex for money (“yes, they do”) and even if they choose to who cares? also this dude is so fucking stupid because, like…………………..if i could get paid to fuck strangers whyyyyy would i fuck my homeboys for free? as a matter of fact, the last thing i wanna do after fucking at my job is go home and fuck off the clock??? you don’t see people receptioning at home, antonio!

antonio says that from the beginning he was a victim of a “classic crime”: baby daddy doesn’t want to be there, prince charming comes along (to be clear, he is calling himself that), baby daddy comes crawling back saying he loves her and wants the kid back, and then boom antonio is out on his ass. antonio corroborates most of what laura said in regard to their relationship, but he adds that they broke up once before really breaking up for real this time, and after they got back together he was “looking for scissors” in laura’s bathroom drawer and happened upon PRINTED OUT DIRECTIONS TO DUDE’S HOUSE.

i don’t give a shit about her going to see her ex (i mean, they have a kid, they are bound from here til as long as everyone is still alive) what made me shout at the top of my lungs is that laura printed? a map and directions?? TO DRIVE SOMEPLACE??? tell me that doesn’t tug on your old nostalgic heartstrings! remember mapquest? remember almost wrecking your toyota tercel on the highway while trying to shuffle through seven sheets of wrinkled printer paper to figure out which exit you should be taking?? yes, it’s the one you drove past four exits ago but who cares, just keep reading while driving and you’ll get there eventually. damn, those were the days.

shortly after his discovery, antonio went on a work trip and says he returned to a dear john letter taped to the window of his car. antonio pulls the letter from his accordion of truth™ and please god let him read some of it. he summarizes (boo, tomato) in a smarmy, manipulative tone that laura basically told him that they were in different places in their lives and should go their separate ways. the judge isn’t moved to tears by this because, frankly, it’s an absolutely normal and boring reason, so antonio tries again, trying to wring some emotion out of greg by telling him that laura even admits to being “with [him] for the wrong reasons,” e.g. his ability to purchase a house with his excellent FICO score.

greg doesn’t really care, but he does ask laura why she chose to end the relationship that way. “because he stalked me and scared my family after we broke up the first time” is the reason she gives, and if that’s true antonio’s lucky he didn’t get some kind of restraining order to go with it. she says that he would sit outside her house all night and when she would leave he would run up on her and no wonder he’s been on here acting slicker than an oil can, he’s nuts!

finally, the car! laura says that she and anthony bought a mitsubishi lancer together with her money. antonio interrupts, saying that it was actually his money, then greg shushes him and laura says she has the bank statement in her accordion of truth™ to prove it. as the judge looks that over, laura explains that their arrangement was going to be that antonio would make the monthly car payments while she would cover the insurance. when they split laura offered to take over the payments so she could keep the vehicle, but said if he didn’t want to let her keep it and pay it off herself antonio would need to return her down payment. you wanna know where this proposal was sorted out? at the bottom of the break up letter, of course! now that is efficiency.

the ruling: antonio explains that what laura failed to mention about that letter was that at the very end she’d added “…but i can’t start paying the note for a few months.” laura! girl!! i was rooting for you!!! you can’t break up in a letter taped on his windshield and tell him you’re keeping your shared car to drive around your new life and assume dude is gonna just keep paying for it until you get your shit together? vomit would explode out of every single hole in my face if someone who broke up with me on a post-it was driving around a car that used to be mine, that’s in my name, that i’m still paying for, with some new bitch in the passenger seat. i can’t take antonio’s side, but that is an outlandish suggestion. turns out the dealership thought so, too, because they repossessed the car. neither of these two paid for it so mitsubishi got their car back, laura’s $3000 down payment got canceled out by her failure to pay, and antonio tanked his credit in the process of all this but maybe this verdict is a bit of sweet revenge: it’s a no for greg, dawg.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: antonio: “can you believe she didn’t look me in the eye while breaking up with me?” greg: “aren’t you the one who proposed marriage to her with an app????”

*bangs gavel*

a little treat