Just trying to pay tuition? Liar!

That is my favorite line from Pitbull’s Go Girl, a ridiculously flat and meaningless song about picking up legitimate prostitutes at a bar (or, in Mr. Bull’s words, “bagging that off of Myspace”). I hear it on the radio so many times on the way to school, but I’d always just roll my eyes at the patheticism (that is a real word form now on) and baseness of the rap.

Well, turns out the Bull wasn’t off base at all. “More women needing cash go from jobless to topless,” reads the headline of a recent news article from the Associated Press. Gentleman’s clubs like Pink Monkey and Sin City are rolling in the dough as college-degreed, previously white-collar-jobbed girls are rolling out the goodies.

Exactly what kind of numbers are we talking about? A “dancer” will earn a couple thousand dollars on a good night. This translates to $100,000-$300,000 a year. The club isn’t the only venue girls are turning to – adult movies and porno magazines are getting more and more responses to job listings as the economy continues flushing itself down the toilet.

The transition to the nightclub scene isn't always a smooth one — from learning to dance in five-inch heels to dealing with the jeers of some customers. "It is like giving a speech, but instead of imagining everyone naked, you're the one who's naked," Rebecca Brown, 29, said.

First of all, dancing in five-inch heels is not a learned skill, it’s a talent. Take it from someone who wore these to photograph a fashion show on a three-step ladder barely wide enough to balance me barefooted. Not only was it the first time I wore them, they were ½ size too big. It’s a gene specific to the double X chromosome pairing, and in the words of Mary Lewis, ‘if you don’t got it, you in trouble’.

Second, well gee, maybe you should have thought of the uh-oh-naked-awkwardness thing before you sent your bra flying onto a bald sweaty head in the front row. Though this time, imagining everyone naked will actually help you, since you’d feel more like you belong. The only problem with that is that once you start feeling more comfortable in a room of naked horny bastards, something’s wrong.

I guess the main question here is whether it’s justifiable. “[In this economy,] desperate measures are becoming far more acceptable," said Jonathan Alpert, a New York City-based psychotherapist who's had “adult” clients. That may be true, but how desperate are you going to get before you’re hovering over a middle-aged fat man with boobs saying Me love you long time? (In case you didn’t know, the phrase is a stereotype of Vietnamese prostitutes who’ve been shipped to the US as young girls who couldn’t really speak English).

Personally, I’d rather earn half of what they do but at a respectable job. A lot of girls may like to get freaky and fool around every once in a while, but I’d never choose that as a career. But hey, the one thing ethics class taught me is that morality is subjective – everyone has their own set of rules. Perhaps these women plan to find mommy-friendly jobs after the economy improves. Until then, they can hang out with guys like Pitbull – after all, he is just “that that raw”.

Chocolate vanilla, part 2

Please read the first part of the story here.

Of course my iPod was eating at its last battery bar when I dug it out of my purse. But we all know it’s like the gas meter in cars, where the arrow can go below the E and the engine runs for another twenty minutes or so. I felt the unpleasant sting of the cold water this morning, an unusual reaction for my cold-blooded organism. And the toothpaste tasted weird. Or maybe it wasn’t mixing well with the colonies of bacteria born in my mouth overnight.

Seven in the morning, he’s probably snoring in someone’s garage. By now I’d normally collapse into a fit of girly depression, but for once I didn’t care why he hadn’t called last night. I knew I should care. It was the very thing I was afraid of happening, and so far all (or at least most) signs pointed to wham-bam-thankya-slam. But somehow I couldn’t make myself care, not when I had something bigger and greater and meaner keeping my brain cells busy. The days of childish analyses of the male mind had just vanished.

MOM I WENT RUNNING ‘CAUSE I WOKE UP EARLY BE BACK AROUND 8. The marker gave out mid-8, and I was too lazy to do a pen search in the pitch black living room. I never really realized how much laziness controlled my life until now, until yesterday afternoon to be more exact. But about that later. It won’t be the end of the world if my mother can’t make out the hour I plan to return home. Actually, it may be for the best.

Outside was chilly and new. I haven’t seen the city in the morning for two months, and it was something to get used to. Streets were completely deserted – good because I hate people staring at me as I’m burning cellulite – and everything was tinted a shade of blue. The tree trunks were blue, the brick walls of houses were blue, even the sidewalks that were recently renewed with black concrete were blue. It’s really a phenomenon, if you ever get a chance to observe the industrial world right before it wakes up. Blue was simple and undemanding. Everything blended in. Now, if there were any changes about how I looked or felt, they were accidentally and conveniently unnoticeable.

My sore thighs screamed with the first few steps I took. Nope, don’t notice anything. Must go faster. I picked up speed to the beat of Rose Falcon’s “Up up up”, casually letting the words sink into my mind. My senses somehow seemed heightened and I was more aware of everything I touched, everything I saw and heard. The hot friction between my keds and the pavement. The sharp curve in the road ahead. The monster garbage truck blasting its horn pipes many yards away. My ear drums were frantically trying to keep up but they were failing, and my ears were hurting, but I turned up the volume. Must go faster.

The worst part is, everything was going so damn well. I don’t know what in hell possessed me to go after more than I could handle. Maybe it’s because I missed him so much. Breakfast together wasn’t enough, and neither was watching TV on my couch like old times or making out during the commercial breaks. I missed him too much. Off came the black tank top and the Victoria’s Secret pj’s, but instead of sex there was cuddling and soft kisses on the cheek and falling asleep in each other’s arms. Stuff like that doesn’t last. I wanted more. And somewhere in my midst of wanting and receiving I lost the scariest thing you can possibly lose: time.

To be continued

Rape, incest: WTH were you thinking?

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve come face to face with some of life’s bleak, horrible realities. Harker does a good job of shielding us from the big bad wolf that is the real world, and while we know there are dangers out there – murder, rape, drug overdose – and while some of us may be unfortunate to deal with such problems through family members or ourselves, nothing, nothing comes close to what goes on in remote corners without anyone’s knowing.

Austria’s Josef Fritzl, 73, was recently sentenced to a life in a psychiatric prison. His crime was locking his daughter Elisabeth in a rat-infested dungeon and continuously raping her for the past 24 years. She was 18 years old then. Fritzl fathered her seven children, and the youngest one died in captivity from neglect.

"I regret it with all my heart ... I can't make it right anymore," - Josef Fritzl

It gets worse. Three of those children had never seen anything outside the dungeon’s four walls until the police investigation 11 months ago. Fritzl brought the other three upstairs to raise with his wife, whom he told Elizabeth ran away to join a cult and abandoned these infants.

Fritzl testified to raping his daughter, sometimes in front of the children, over 3,000 times.

He is sentenced to lifelong imprisonment in Vienna’s psychiatric ward because the guy is so starkly deranged. Many commentators say we should lock him up in a cell and throw away the key, to give him a taste of his own medicine. I support the shrink option because prison, it seems to me, would only make the beast more depraved, and God knows what he’ll unleash on the population should he escape/be let off for parole.

Thinking about life after high school never really scared me until now. Not that I think something like this will happen to me – knock on wood and spit over your left shoulder – but when I don’t have my mom’s often overprotective breathing face down my neck, what ridiculous shenanigans will I get myself into? Life forgives many of our mistakes, but what if one day I’ll ease myself into a situation I can’t get out of harmlessly?

Just a warning, kids. You never know what sort of freakos are lurking in the shadows. Be very careful.

To read the full article, go here.

Chocolate vanilla, part 1

This is the beginning of a fictional story I am writing. Every friday, I will post a new part of the chapter, so check back next week for the continuation. This is © by me - that means no stealing, plagiarizing, or using it for your english papers. Got it?


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I woke up that morning not feeling any different.

I didn’t look any different, either. Five foot eight, give or take a few centimeters. Three month old nail polish that chipped off everywhere except for my two big toes. Tacky, but I secretly liked the bright red Texas-shaped blotches polka dotting my pale feet. Like a vixen. Rawr.

I sat on my bed staring at my feet, at the toenails. It wasn’t even seven in the morning yet so there was no light from the window to really examine myself in the mirror for any changes. Too lazy to hop over the pile of crap left from the old furniture to turn on the lamp, and I didn’t really care. Seven in the morning. I could go running, I suppose. As long as I’m up and have absolutely no plans to collapse back into bed.

I haven’t had any physical exercise since I quit soccer in February. Time to haul ass. This black tank top I was wearing, that would do; but since when did it get so tight around my chest? I dumbly realized I fell asleep in my bra. What time did I crash last night? Don’t remember much. Only that I didn’t even have the energy to hop over the other pile of crap to get to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

I would have to find other pants. There was just no way I was stinking up my favorite Victoria’s Secret PJs. The only thing I was able to unearth from my closet was the average black capris with a white stripe on each side, the loose kind your mother would wear to the gym. In fact, I think these were my mother’s. All my other pants were still in the suitcase outside my room I was too lazy to unpack.

And socks, I’d need socks. And then I’d need to brush my teeth like right now. Breakfast was out of the question, I didn’t need extra cramps in my stomach. Extra because I was already sore in my ribs, my arms (strangely enough), and the inside of my thighs.

Which reminded me, I needed to call Natalie to ask her to take a little trip with me after she got off work.

It is so typical of us humans to suddenly strive to be healthy right after we screw up. In my defense, I’d been meaning to go running for a few weeks now. Our summer vacation in Spain gave little room for morning exercise, though, and it’s only my third day back. Light was starting to creep through blinds that haven’t been dusted since June thirteenth and I got a good look at my pathetic contemplative face. Stop thinking. Go run.

To be continued

Why I love music

I can’t remember how old I was when I first started playing the piano. My grandma’s always had an enormous wooden keyboard that took up half a wall in her living room, and my mother took piano lessons for seven years after high school. Usually I’d just bang on the notes. My absolute favorite thing to do was start at the lowest key and run my middle finger to the very highest, and then back down the other way. I loved how the sound reverberated through grams’ small, stuffy apartment.

When I was little, they’d always say I should go on the show “Morning Star”. It featured young unknown kids with strong, powerful voices and a good ear for the melody. Unfortunately, I lived here, on the brink of anti-civilization, while the Russian Hollywood was here. Moscow, the city of lights, vodka, and fancy clothing brands.

Instead, we moved here when I was 8. Without a piano, I became disconnected from music. In our highly intrusive apartment complex, I found it difficult to find time to sing. And so a few years went by living under a rock, and only occasionally resurfacing to catch the latest songs on the radio.

Then we bought a piano. I couldn’t and still can’t read notes, but I’d pick a song on YouTube and find the right chords. It was ridiculously hard at first – I’d lost all my knack for recognizing the tone and matching it with the right key – but I got there. You have no idea how amazing it feels to be able to sit in front of a piano with the rain thudding on the window in front of me and play “Apologize” by OneRepublic.

Nowadays, music took herself on a whole new level. According to Dana Strait, a music cognition researcher at Northwestern University, musical training increases your nervous system’s ability to process emotion in speech and other sounds. Yes, you read that right – musicians find it easier to tell apart the different nuances of sentiment when talking to, say, their significant other. I presume this would come in handy during the latest “I’m sorry”, “I love you”, and “honey, she’s my sister, I swear!”, among others.

And this is why I love music.


To learn more about the experiment, read here.

Police hot-wire sleepy drivers with chili

If you’re wondering what our friends in China are doing, well, they’re doing that. According to traditional Chinese belief that people feel sleepy in the springtime, police are now feeding drivers – yes, your average Joe, or I guess in their case, Cho – raw chili at highway service stations to prevent them from falling asleep at the wheel.

Lucky for the drivers, chilies are quite popular in those provinces. Because if I were them, I would really hate to be forcefed crap that burnt my tongue without getting any kick out of it.

"It's really good to have some hot peppers when you are tired from driving. They make you alert." – van driver Chen Jun

The measures are not so extreme if you consider that China’s roads are possibly some of the deadliest the world has ever seen (with the obvious exception of roads in Turkmenistan, my home country, where there are no lanes and drivers only see one color on traffic lights).

Still, seems a kind of ridiculous way to stay awake. Haven’t they heard of coffee? Redbull? Loud music, for crying out loud? Then again, music probably isn’t the best alternative if the drivers already find it hard to pay attention to road rules.

Personally, I have never pulled an all-nighter, so I probably am not the best person to ask about how to stay conscious. That’s right, I go to Harker and the latest I’ve ever stayed up was 4. Nevertheless, what helped keep me awake that long was some good coffee, manually prying my eyes open, and wearing thin clothes so that I always had light goosebumps. Can’t fall asleep if you’re ridiculously uncomfortable.

What methods have you used when you needed to stay awake and alert?


You can read the full article here.

Look ma, no brains!

What will C-class celebrities not do to be gossiped about.

If you're not Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan, meaning if you don't produce pornos of yourself and continue to show up in rehab, maybe you're like this guy. Wade Witcomb, a magician known by his stage name Wade Live. According to his videos online, Witcomb packaged himself in a wooden crate and departed on a 26-hour trip from New York to Las Vegas. The sad part is, everyone easily bought that UPS security was too dense to notice an 8x5 container with rather large holes and a million tiny cameras pointing outside the crate.

Unfortunately, we were again forced to discover that Santa doesn't exist. As this sort of stunt would break several laws, FBI got involved, and here's the final verdict: last Tuesday, Witcomb admitted that it was nothing more than an elaborate hoax.

Well, there goes his reputation. I always talk about becoming an actress, but no matter how desperate I get, there are some things I will never do for publicity.


Things Masha will never do for publicity no matter how far she gets down the alphabet class:

• Post racy photos of myself onto the internet
  
• Post unsexy photos of myself in a wet t-shirt doing the kissy face onto the internet
  
• Arrive naked to the MTV movie awards
  
• Walk by a poster advertising my own movie and "accidentally" get stalked by the paparazzi
  
• Star in any MTV reality show. Ever.
  
• Liplock a chick on camera
  
• Liplock a chick on camera while another stands watching. That's just rude.
  
• Hang out with these guys
  

That's just a few things off the top of my head. On the other hand, forget this celebrity business. I'm just gonna go work at Starbucks.

But where are the jobs?

As a second semester senior with almost nothing to do (that’s right, I succumbed to senioritis and gave up on doing homework, I’m a disgrace to the Harker community yada yada), I had the bright idea to find a job before heading off into the real world. My pick went to a Starbucks within a walking distance away from my house. Sure I heard about the recent job shortage caused by the financial crisis, but come on – among the emo stoners and other losers already working there, I would surely be the gem in a mountain of pebbles.

Instead of a job offer, reality slapped me in the face. Hard. According to Christopher Rugaber, an Associated Press economics writer, the number of unemployed Americans has soared to 12.5 million just in the last month. What does that mean for hapless coffee shop workers? Less hours and a cutback on raises. What does that mean for me? Spending my next three or so months in Starbucks on the customers’ side of the counter.

This will not stop my senior year, either. Financial advisors say that while the worst is yet to come – unemployment rates should reach an all-time low in 2010 since the Great Depression – the economy is so weak that it will take as much as five years to return to its pre-recession state.

Seems it would be wise to choose a major that will be a hot topic in the decade to come. Question is, Rugaber, is there one?

“Broadly, jobs are being added in education, health care and the federal government, the Labor Department said, with the government adding 9,000 new jobs last month alone. Some places that are hiring, such as companies that make nuclear power equipment, haven't been hit that hard by the recession. Others, such as discount retailers, are actually benefiting from the downturn as shoppers turn thriftier.”

So keep in mind, underclassmen, when you start to think about what you want to do with the rest of your life. It’s one thing to pursue your dreams and another to be practical – like it or not, we live in a completely materialistic world, and you can’t get anywhere without the green.

Like the Comcast commercial goes, everyone loves Money.

What can you do now? As Rugaber points out, retail is fervently grabbing teenagers and twenty-something college students by their blue collars. My friend, already happily working at Starbucks, got a second job at Abercrombie & Fitch. Maybe it’s not exactly discount retail, it’s still $8 an hour.

Goshdarnit. I guess that L'Oréal mascara won’t end up in my makeup bin anytime soon.


You can read the full article here.