Today I went to my favorite beauty supply shop, on a street in a wealthy community where everyone is too thin and the people sitting outside Peete’s Coffee are talking to their agents on their iPhones. It’s a great shop that carries every obscure brand you’ve ever heard of and the sales people leave you alone unless you want their help.

I picked out two hair products that won’t have any effect on the quality of my hair, but I enjoy the process of wasting money this way. At the counter, a woman was asking for help with her eyebrows. She was explaining that her eyebrow has a cowlick and nothing she’s tried could solve the problem.

I was fascinated. The sales person was eager to help, and obviously relished the opportunity. She suggested eyebrow gel, but the woman said that gels haven’t worked. I managed to suppress my urge to butt in. Personally, I swear by Lancome eyebrow gel in Brunet. It grooms the brows nicely and makes them look nice and full.

The sales person suggested mustache wax to tame the problem hair. I thought this was a great idea, even though I know you can actually get eyebrow wax at Bloomingdales or somewhere. It’s probably the same stuff, right? But the woman balked at mustache wax. She changed the subject to the dark circles under her eyes but continued to complain about her eyebrows. They were the bane of her existence, she said bitterly.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it. “Just pull that fucker out!” I snapped helpfully. Everyone turned to look at me. The sales woman smiled and said, “You’re so funny!” the way people do when they’re shocked by your candor. The eyebrow lady whined, “No, then I’ll have a bald spot!”

Now that I was involved, I offered a barrage of solutions but the eyebrow lady shot down each one. I began to realize how agitated she was. Maybe she didn’t really want help. Now she was complaining about the concealer she’d been offered and she refused to try the moustache wax.  The sales woman turned to assist another customer and the eyebrow lady announced that she would try a department store, where “someone has the time” to give her their “complete attention.”

I realized that she was nuts. Not in any dramatic way, but still nuts. One of the things I love about the beauty supply store is listening to women explain what they’re looking for, in a beseeching tone that reveals their absolute belief that something will make them beautiful and happy. I find it so poignant. The belief and the hope in that beauty supply store could fill several churches.

The eyebrow lady was an anomaly that almost ruined my pleasure in wasting $42. Almost. But when she left the store, everything was restored to normal.  I was disappointed that the nail polish I wanted was discontinued: it’s called “Bring on the Bling” and I tried it on last week when my BFF was having a manicure. It was like an entire Mardis Gras in a bottle.

Thank god I can still enjoy beauty products and I’m not a crazy eyebrow lady. That is my affirmation for today.

I always enjoy the discovery of a scholarly approach to a silly or lowbrow subject. Remember when Camille Paglia used to write about Madonna?

I had no idea that Black Metal Theory is now a philosophy and field of study complete with international symposia and experts  who say things like this:

We have been told by the living that the idea of a vital world is that of comfort and warmth. [Writer] Dominic Fox assures us that this is not the case. With an unparalleled militant efficiency, Cold World [a book about Black Metal] blackens the lines between poetics and politics, music and negative resistance. It is a haunting sermon from the world of the dead exhorting the living to revolt in the name of a life whose vitality has been disenchanted by coldness and whose sacredness has been profaned by nigredo. Reza Negarestan - Author of Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction

God. What the hell is “nigredo,” right? I looked it up and you can, too. But there’s no way that Black Metal Theory can be taken seriously, especially when it’s discussed in dense academic mumbo jumbo of the first oder.  Here is Scott Wilson, a professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Kingston University in London:

Black Metal is clearly a form of environmental writing, but one that could not easily be accommodated into current ecological discourse. Participants seriously considered the idea of melancology both as black ecology, exploring black metal as a geophilosophy of real and psychic spaces (the frozen desert is not so much ‘out there’ but inside you), and as an ethos, looking at black metal as the re-occultation of black blood and bile in rituals of mourning and celebration for the death of God and the extinction of his creation, particularly humanity, under the black sun of melancholy. As such, the symposium connected with a new strain in contemporary philosophy that regards extinction as a speculative opportunity for thought. Black metal resounds from the abyss and it is precisely only in relation to its sonic forces that the question of intervention in the environment arises in the articulation of melancology with ethics. That is, in deciding ‘which way out’ we should take, in deciding with what surpluses to dwell, with what waste, what detritus or decay in a process of unbinding with sonic forces that traverse an earth choking in wealth and death.

Ha! Blah blah blah. What a bunch of fucking wankers. All I know is that Varg Vikernes,  leader of the band Burzum, was released from jail after serving 16 years for killing a guy from Mayhem, a rival band, and burning down some churches.

Now he has a website, http://www.burzum.org, and two new albums. For some reason he hates Black people,  despite all the dark black negredo of his chosen musical genre. He probably needs to study the Theory.

This choice is a no-brainer but that doesn’t mean it’s not deserved.

Debbie Schlussel is an offensive lunatic whose existence was not on my radar until now. Here I thought that Mrs. Palin was the stupidest, most reprehensible woman in the United States! Now I’m concerned that she has a rival.

Debbie, this is some fucked up reprehensible shit you are up to. Congratulations on your achievement.

*

What an intelligent, eloquent woman.  The anti-Palin, one might say.

Courtney Love has finally triumphed over bad plastic surgery and now looks like a generic Hollywood cougar.  Kurt would be spinning in his grave if dead people could still be embarrassed.  In any case, her offenses against his memory (not to mention his child) are so ghastly that there’s no territory left for her to plunder.

What has Courtney Love ever done that was worthy of respect? Her first album was largely the product of her husband’s creative genius, and it’s been downhill ever since. She started off as a singlemindedly ambitious groupie, bagged a vulnerable rising rock star, and squandered much of his fortune on nosejobs and dope. Even her own kid can’t stand her.

I’ve just read an artful analysis of her cultural significance but the only part I agree with is that our society revels in the spectacle of public self-destruction. It’s enthralling to watch people making asses of themselves! That’s why I love those Real Housewives.

There’s also something very compelling about people who are literally shameless. Madonna comes to mind in this category. Courtney Love will tweet naked pictures of herself, blab about everyone she’s had sex with, betray all her friends and flaunt her bad spelling as though it’s her life’s work to be annoying.

Here is her best quote to date, spoken to the author of a recent profile in the New York Times:

“For years, despite having impeccable taste, I didn’t understand how to convey that I had impeccable taste.”

Oh Courtney! How frustrating that must have been!

I’m sure we’re supposed to regard her as some kind of tragic figure but it’s all the consequence of vanity and greed. Fuck her! Most people settle for one nosejob and call it a day. She’s just an awful woman who doesn’t know when enough is enough.

The commuinques above are from the esteemed owner of Dolly Python, a shop in Dallas, using a nom de guerre.

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This one below is from the classy socialite and fashion maven Judy Aldridge (regarding Anna Wintour):

What do they have in common? I see a disturbing preoccupation with menstruation.

I remember being around 10 years old and having to see a film in school about menstruation. I  recall feeling intense embarrassment and general discomfort.

But then I got a little older and had my first period. My sister showed me what to do. It was kind of upsetting. She forgot to tell me that you had to keep changing your pads. But soon enough, I learned that menstruation is just a part of life. I never used cute little euphemisms like “My friend is in town” or however that one goes. I never  called it “the curse.” I would say, “I have my period, do you have an extra tampax?” or something like that.

Once, after a night out and being a little tipsy, I couldn’t find my tampax! I tried and tried but the more anxious I became, the more impossible it was to do it. Finally, I went to get my date (now my husband) who was waiting in the bedroom.

Now, for you gals in Texas, it’s time to leave. You’re never going to be able to handle this. Scram! Shoo!

Okay, so then, my gracious date told me to lay down and relax. He would find it for me. I will never forget how gentle he was.  Gentle, confident, and manly. Manly enough to remove the tampax and go throw it away like a gentleman. I felt my heart go CLUNK. This was a man in a million. I fell in love right there, right then. Nineteen years later, he is still the only man whose hands I want on me. Except for Johnny Depp, of course.

I always loved having my period. It’s messy but sensual. It reminds you that you are a woman. It reminds you of the cycles of nature, the moon and the tides.

Where does the fear and loathing come from, ladies of Texas??

If you would like to share your memories or point of view and you can do so without being a slobbering lunatic, jump in.

Ahem. Let the meeting come to order!

First of all, in response to all the nice people who are concerned about my age, my shriveled anus, and so on, I would like to make it clear that I will be fifty seven this month and I fucking rule. See me arm wrestling above, at a family gathering a couple of weeks ago.

Face it! I just rule. It’s not my fault that I didn’t over-pluck my eyebrows, I didn’t like staying out in the sun, I didn’t fuck up my hair and I was just lucky that way. This rampant ageism among the nice people who have recently come aboard is very sad. They are terrified of aging but that’s not my fault either. In any case, that particular weapon is useless here. Thanks anyway!

Second: An excitable woman in Texas has taken it upon herself to rally her Good Ol Gals on facebook to come here and cause mischief. The woman is a pal of Sea and Mom.  Here is her best comment thus far:

Now we know more than we wanted to know about Sea’s appraisal of me. She is welcome to perseverate on female genitalia, as she does on her “other” blog. Just not mine.

As it turns out, poor Mom is also preoccupied with me as evidenced by a histrionic screed that she left as a comment, using a proxy server.  Her comment was particular shocking, coming from a mother, but obviously our ideas of morality are very different. At least she got Sea to delete this “thought:”

Grief, shoes, it’s all the same to some people. Scary but true.

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Now, here is my thinking. I have been committed to a blog that is free of censorship. But this orchestrated attempt to waste my time is annoying my real readers. So, how about one of these strategies:

1. When some lunatic leaves a comment that slanders me ( in the true sense of slander) we shall respond to them with the word “WHORE!”  For example,  “Dumbbell” writes “LOL sister wolf, your an old old old anus with no sole” the response from faithful readers shall be “WHORE!”

or

2. I will just allow the first two lines of every slanderous comment and delete the rest. That way, “Judy under a fake name” can write: “sister wolf you make me sick, bile vitriol, venom, old old old empty lonely bad mother crazy as a loon and even reading my freaking ebay curations and you make me so sick and you hate on and your just so old and  why don’t you get a life you horrible old thing and bab bad mother who doesnt know how to grieve like we do in Texas you old old older-than-me narcissist narcissist bla bla bla bla” but it will be shortened to “sister wolf you make me sick, bile vitriol, venom, old old old empty”

Well, these are my ideas for now.

Any stupid lunatic out there who thinks they can mess me up, knock yourself out. I will say whatever I want about whoever I want. I am exactly who I say I am. I have nothing to hide. I don’t ask for special courtesy because of my loss. But if you go out of your way to fuck with me, I will express my annoyance.

The rest of you, I couldn’t love you more.  xo

If you’ve been wanting to tell Phil “all women are cunts who need to be shot in the face” Spector what you think about him, here’s your chance! I’ll go first.

Dear Phil,

I’m glad you’re going to jail to pay for what you’ve done. You’re a crazy motherfucker and it’s time to put you away. It’s nice to know that all your money can’t protect you now. I’m sorry you are so short, but that doesn’t mean you get to bully people or kill them. I still love the Christmas album, though. Nice work on that.

Okay, take care (just kidding!)

Love,
Sister Wolf

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Your turn.