Spottify is very, very spotty

I wanted to have some music playing while I worked today, but I didn't feel like dealing with putting cd's in the player.  I figured the next best thing was to use one of the web radio services available, and I chose Spottify.  I began by selecting the rather scant offerings provided on the opening pass provided by the system, most of which were unfamiliar to me, but I certainly thought that selecting "80's music", an era I mostly remember, and partially enjoyed, would work for me.  Instead I was assaulted with several Peter Gabriel songs in a row (and I loathe Peter Gabriel).  I know he was popular, but I do recall other acts during that decade, unless those were hallucinations (and I will acknowledge that's a possibility).  I kept fast forwarding, and it went from bad to worse.  Then I tried to go in and select other things by naming artists I enjoy, most actually working today, often without the benefit of hair extensions, surgery or spanx, but the system didn't seem familiar with any of them.  I tried to browse, but once again I was faced with a large collection of artists who sounded vaguely suspect, like the names my friends and I used to make up for our future bands when we were in junior high.  I am old, and fat, and rarely leave the house, but I am still young enough to know the difference between horrible over-produced milli-vanilli-esque fakery house dance musique and actual music, which is what I was hoping to find.
I'm going back to Pandora.  Her box may be mostly empty, but it plays the music I'm looking for, even if it's impossible to make it play the specific song I have in mind.  (which was the reason I was shopping for a new service like Spottify).

April 13, 2013  Oakland, California

honesty? In moderation, I suppose

Some people actually desire honesty, but I have not met them. I have met a lot of people who think they do, but they have proved to be liars in the end. I learned early that no man wants information about past lovers, especially if the number is large or they were good. When asked, I learned to say, “In some cultures they have no numbers over 3. They count like this, ‘One, two, three, many.’ Let’s just go with that.” It has often been effective, if not successful. You can see in their eyes that they are adding decimal places, but rarely more than they themselves have. If they had 10 lovers and they like you a lot, they will say to themselves that you had 9. If they were uncomfortable with how good your blow job was, with the way you followed their breath, with your ability to subdue your gag reflex, even if only briefly, and it surprises them that you know to stick a finger in their ass, if those things seem dangerously fast to them, things they only learned from porno or a hooker, then they will say to themselves that you had 11 lovers.

It never occurs to them that there are some people who understand how to do those things without instruction, that instinct comes naturally, and the same raw talent that teaches a novice where to press in a shoulder massage also knows when a man’s heart quickens, when what one is doing is good, or when it isn’t working. That sort of person has never asked, “Was it good for you?” Even during their first time with a boy, the answer was obvious.

Actual experience may have been lacking, but my Father bought one of those Betamaxes – the vcr’s in the format that got discontinued, and in his small collection, besides the films I bought him because I loved them, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Streetcar Named Desire, he hid away Behind the Green Door, and on evenings when the adults were out, all of the kids, including babysitters, watched it eagerly, even though it was actually kind of disgusting. My parents always tried to be very open minded about sex, they invested in a program for girls (I think there was a companion program for boys, but I’m not sure) that took sex education far beyond anything taught in school. It was for the parents who were not just certain that teaching abstinence was stupid and ineffective, but that they had an obligation to teach us to love our bodies, to have orgasms, to never give away our power with a lover. They showed us movies of genitals so we would know how normal we were, sending us home with a hand mirror and a speculum so we could check ourselves out. There was a lot of role playing where we expressed our needs and desires, and stood up for ourselves with regard to contraception. HIV was not around yet at that point, but just a few years later, when I was actually sexually active, HIV was always an issue. I have never been a sexual adult without the spectre of HIV out there. Fortunately, when I was fifteen and had barely been kissed, I had a lot of practice insisting on condoms.

I wound up on primetime television talking about sex (which I had not had) because I had taken the classes. There were about 8 of us interviewed for the show on camera, but somehow, when the show aired, most of the interviews had landed on the cutting room floor, except for my entirely intellectual understanding of how the class would help me, make me happier and healthier than my Mother, someday.

My parents were not embarrassed to talk about sex before that, especially not my Mother. Once, when I was 11, my mom asked if I had any questions about sex.

I said, “Mom, in a blow-job; do you blow, or do you suck?”

She said, “Suzi, it’s just a figure of speech.”