Spaceships
and Kool-Aid

Coke Talk of the Day

Today my family dragged me to see “The Blind Side.”

It’s the one about a nouveau riche soccer mom who rescues a gentle giant teenager from being black in Memphis because it seems like the good christian thing to do for college football.

Sandra Bullock basically proves that if you henpeck your country music star husband who owns fifty Taco Bells into buying a pickup truck and a private tutor, you can teach any old kid from the projects to read at a fifth grade level as long as he’s got NFL potential.

The moral of the story is pretty simple — white people are benevolent do-gooders, and black people are helpless, scary animals.

Feel-good movie my ass. After watching that train wreck, my soul had never felt so empty.

Of course, everybody else loved it. Loved it.

Sitting in that theater — with that crowd — I was surrounded, completely engulfed by the shallow ignorance of the red state zeitgeist.

How horrifying.

Call me an elitist bitch, but I can’t wait to get back to LA.

You know that ugly feeling when a smug little man smiles at you like he just bought you on sale and suddenly your spine turns to glass and your ears become refrigerator coils and your guts squeeze dry and you're filled back up with the warm oily urge to cross the room for no other reason than to smash all five of your ring encrusted knuckles through the soft meat of his lower jaw and relish the sound of his teeth hitting linoleum like you'd just dropped a handful of Skittles?

That is how I feel about Jason Schwartzman.

Coke Talk of the Day

I went to visit my friend in prison again. He’s bored as hell.

When I mentioned that I was writing a whacked-out advice column, he begged me to let him read it. He suggested I print it out and send it to him like a letter. I thought that was a damn fine idea.

As it was my first time writing to someone in the slammer, I decided to check the manual. Every correctional institution in California has it’s own fancy-pants website, wherein you’ll find a comprehensive list of do’s, don’ts, and other little known jailhouse etiquettes to observe when sending a friendly letter.

I was rather disheartened to learn that “letters and envelopes must be free from any white-out, lipstick marks, address labels, or stickers of any kind. No large cards, musical cards, cards with glitter or other items attached will be allowed.”

As tempting as it was, I resisted the urge to leave him a lipstick mark in white-out and glitter.

Instead, I printed out Dear Coke Talk. Every last entry.

I followed the rules to the letter. Plain white paper. No paper clips or staples. No pictures or photocopies of pictures. It was a sixty page stack of dense black-and-white text that looked as boring as an insurance policy.

I slapped some stamps on that sucker and sent it off to the big house.

That was two weeks ago.

Guess what came back in the mail today? Yep. Return to motherfucking sender. At first, I thought I’d screwed up the address or something, but then I realized it had been opened.

Sure enough, there was a big red sticker on the front of the envelope with three check boxes. The first was labeled “Not in Custody,” the second was labeled “Need Inmate Number,” and the third was labeled “Unacceptable Items.”

Someone had checked the “Unacceptable Items” box.

Then, just to go the extra mile, they did something that made me very, very proud. Right there next to the checkbox, some corrections officer went out of his way to scribble out two additional words:

OBSCENE MATERIAL

Coke Talk of the Day

I just got an email from my mom in Florida.

Apparently, her next door neighbor’s cousin’s son is a certain television actor here in LA. Of course, she wants to hook us up.

Here’s a delicious little slice from her email:

“He went to Harvard- no slouch! He is about your age and by all accounts is a fine young man. I personally thing you need to meet him- would you like me to work on that?”

Bless her heart, she has such good intentions. I love my mom dearly. She is a stoic Southern woman, and this is the closest she ever comes to meddling.

I know it kills her that I’m still single, but the implications of her trying to set me up with an actor are downright hilarious.

There’s a silver lining to this, I suppose. It’s the first sign that she’s finally accepted the fact that I’m not just “going through a Los Angeles phase.”

Now I just have to find a ladylike way of breaking it down for her:

I don’t date actors. I just fuck them.

Is the tag on my reputation showing?

One of my vanilla flavored colleagues just pulled me aside and asked me to recommend a place where she could buy some kinky sex gear.

“Oh,” I said, “are you planning a halloween outfit?”

She got very serious. As if she were trying to score some street corner smack, she leaned in and whispered, “No. This is for real. I want the good stuff.”

Now I’m mildly concerned, because I have no idea how she would know to ask me about that kind of shit.

I’m standing there in work hair and a blazer, and suddenly I feel like everybody knows that I’m wearing La Perla.

Admittedly, I could have given her three phone numbers to various specialty and high-end custom shops and told her to drop my name if she wanted a discount, but this is the kind of woman who leaves lipstick on her diet coke can.

While I have nothing against her, she’s never seen anything other than my fake smile, and I want to keep it that way.

I told her to go to the Hustler Store on Sunset, and she thanked me like a fucking tourist.

In hindsight, it may have been a mistake.

Sure, the Hustler Store may be the Disneyland teacup ride for me, but now I’m worried that it’s enough to confirm all that bitch’s suspicions.

Coke Talk of the Day

Los Angeles doesn’t have any Walmarts.

The surrounding suburbs all have one, so if you look at a map you’ll see twenty Walmarts ringing the city in a barbarians-at-the-gates sort of way, and I’ve got no business going into those neighborhoods.

I mention this so I can justify not having stepped foot into a Walmart since childhood, because it’s not that I’m a snob.

Well, it wasn’t that I’m a snob. Over the weekend I visited a Walmart in the deep south, and now I can safely say that the Walmart experience is beneath me.

I have nothing against big box or discount stores — I fucking love Target, and I’ll chainsaw though a TJ Maxx like Rachel Zoe on crack — but Walmart, oh dear. It hurt my soul.

Fuck the everyday low prices. I’m talking about the undignified humanity. I did not think it was possible to combine that much morbid obesity with such a sheer lack of personal hygiene.

The average family had to weigh close to a thousand pounds. I actually saw a woman stuffing her face with a Big Mac while she was shopping for food.

What a fucking horror show.

I will give them credit for truth in advertising, because they’re right. Beauty costs less at Walmart.

There is a reason beauty costs less, and I assure you it is not because supply outweighs demand.

It is because at Walmart, beauty is cheap.

Life too, for that matter.

Coke Talk of the Day

Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.

Updating your resume reflects your public life. The stories you tell about your co-workers over dinner reflect your private life, and the fact that you’re fucking your boss or embezzling money from the company reflects your secret life.

Certain professions get more face time with folks in their secret life. If you’re a lawyer, priest, or prostitute you probably already know what I’m talking about.

I much prefer the secret life, and for whatever reason, people are very comfortable letting me be a part of theirs. Ask anyone who’s watched a sunrise with me, and they’ll admit that I’m pretty much a lawyer, priest, and prostitute all rolled into one.

The secret life is a much more raw and visceral way to experience the human condition. Loyalties runs deeper. Friendships are more intimate. People are more honest, even when they’re lying.

The flip side is that betrayals are dangerous. They aren’t just mildly embarrassing. They cause legitimate harm.

In fact, the whole notion of honor among thieves is really just a way of describing the higher standard of integrity required of those who operate in the realm of the secret life.

It’s because of this higher standard that I choose to remain anonymous.

Social media is doing a hell of a job blurring the lines between public and private, but we can all agree that blogging is inherently public.

Personal blogs — when they’re at their very best — share moments that are intensely private, but unless they are anonymous, they can never delve into the secret without causing harm.

I want to cram as much brutal truth into my writing as possible, and I can only do that when I’m free to share experiences from my secret life. Names are omitted to protect the guilty, including mine.

For those of you who’ve been asking, this is why I won’t reveal who I am.

Dear Coke Talk,

Do you ever wonder why your here? And your purpose? Or if you’ll ever find true love? I think about these things every once in a while, and although its great being single and wild, these thoughts come and go. What about you?

As an existential nihilist, I have a problem with folks who indulge in grandiose wonderings about a greater purpose to life.

Anyone with the slightest sense of scale recognizes that nothing we do matters. In a universe so infinitely vast, our lives are entirely without meaning. The trick is being able to laugh at the abyss because you recognize the freedom it affords you.

Pondering your purpose is philosophical masturbation, and the only way you can make yourself cum is by surrendering rational thought to religious doctrine.

No thank you — I don’t need god. I already have a clit.

I’m perfectly cozy with the cold hard knowledge that I’ll die never understanding the nature of the universe. In the meantime, I’ve carved out my own little corner of paradise and filled it with all kinds of love, none of which I would insult by deeming any one more “true” than the other.

That’s another thing — I can’t stand it when grown-ass women use the word “true” as an adjective for something so important as love. There is no such thing as true love. Only love.

Going through life with the expectation of some fantastical form of uber-love is childish wish-thinking that would be silly if it weren’t so damaging to adult relationships.

Sure, I like “The Princess Bride” as much as the next gal, but fairy tales are lies we tell to children. Still, the myth of Prince Charming manages to sneak past Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny only to worm its way into our romantic expectations.

We don’t write letters to the North Pole anymore, but somehow we’re still waiting to be swept off our feet.

Again, no thank you — I don’t need a prince. I just need a guy who can find my clit.

Coke Talk of the Day

One of my favorite conversations when making new acquaintances over a coke mirror occurs when I discover that my fellow party enthusiast is on some sort of highly ritualized, self-inflicted starvation regimen.

These are usually rail thin model types in from New York who are a delightful combination of dumb and worldly, and I take great pleasure in listening to to them expound on the health benefits of raw veganism.

They ramble on about whatever rare fruit is currently setting antioxidant world records, and then express little pangs of guilt as they hoover up line after line with comments like, “I really shouldn’t be doing this.”

I can’t help but fuck with them a little bit. You should see their eyes light up when I explain to them in all seriousness that this cocaine is 100% organic and that it’s infused with all natural plant extracts from the mountains of Peru that clarify the mind, reduce hunger, and promote an overall sense of well-being.

You’d be surprised how often they say, “Oh my god, I’ve heard about this stuff!”

Unfortunately, I doubt I’ll be able to pull it off ever again.

I just read Molly Young’s latest article where she cleverly describes a rule of thumb about whether to take self-important food-stuffs seriously by asking “What Would Steve Martin Eat?”

Steve Martin is the court jester of my older-man crushes, and I can’t help but smile when I think about him. Inevitably, the next time I utter the phrase “100% organic cocaine,” I will first hear it in my head in Steve Martin’s voice.

There’s no way I’ll be able to keep a straight face.

Dear Coke Talk,

Here’s the deal. I met this guy not to long ago, over the internet . Blahblahblah to that, I have no problem with meeting people online. He is hot. Damn good looking And I usually go for the nerdy lanky boys. HOWEVER, this boy is gorgeous. On with the story. We talked for the first time last week on the phone, around tuesday or wednesday. We ended up having phone sex. I have NO idea how it even got to that point but it did. And I feel kinda weird about it because I do not do that with guys I have just started talking to. I like to keep some kind of respect for myself. He wants pictures of me sans clothing now. And I don’t know how to say no. Because let’s face it, I phone fucked the guy the first time talking to him. And after that, how do you say no to something as simple as pictures? Part of my thinks I wouldn’t mind, but part of me would like to save some kind of whatever dignity I may have left. I’m not quite sure what to do here.

Ah, the perils of 21st century whoredom. Every last one of us has a few naughty pics floating out there in the digital ether, and nowadays the American teenage experience includes making your first sex tape before getting your drivers license.

Billions of little red record buttons, so simple and ubiquitous, make it far too easy for boys to do what boys like to do — point and shoot. It desensitizes girls like yourself until you’re asking ridiculous questions like, “how do you say no to something as simple as pictures?”

Simple as pictures? Are you fucking kidding me? The legal and emotional consequences of turning a camera into a sex toy can be staggeringly complicated and more permanent than an STD.

If every iPhone shipped with anal beads instead of a camera, would you still be asking how to say no to something as simple as assplay?

You’re not sure what to do here because you seem to have devalued this part of your sexuality. Take a moment to reflect on the levels of trust and intimacy that are required to safely share naked photos with someone, and hopefully you’ll see that I’m not being facetious when I compare this to taking it up the ass.

Posing for pics can be incredibly hot, and shooting a wildly creative sex tape can be one of the most intimate things you do with your partner, but the decision to let anyone other than yourself control that content is a serious one.

Don’t kid yourself — the second you email naked pics to a phone-fuck buddy you met online less than a week ago, you’ve effectively posted those pics to every amateur porn site this side of Chatsworth.

Just tell the guy no. If he presses you, turn the tables on him — insist that he be the one to send raunchy pics. If he backs down, that’s the end of it.

If he follows through and sends you pics, tell him they aren’t raunchy enough and that he has to send more. Never promise to send any in return.

Demand that he send you dirtier and dirtier pics of himself until he either backs down, grosses you out, or gives you so much blackmail ammunition that there’s no harm in sending him a naked pic or two.

If you do ever decide to send him something, make sure he’s familiar with the doctrine of mutually assured embarrassment, and let him know that you’d go nuclear on his ass if he ever stepped out of line with your pics.

Be wild and have fun, but take this shit seriously.