Chamblee54

PG has a FBF that we will call Deutsch. He recently moved to Ohio to do graduate school. This is the opposite of the normal pattern, whereby people from Ohio move to Georgia. Something about trying to get to Florida, and running out of gas halfway through.
Deutsch has been keeping up on facebook. He wrote “I think I have a mullet now. I don’t know how to feel.” Somebody added “It makes me look just like a cow. Or a pig that needs to squeal.”
Apparently, Deutsch knows someone who reads Cosmopolitan. There was a post, 17 Shades of Stupid: Cosmo’s Worst BDSM Tips. There is no hint of a memorial to Helen Gurley Brown here. PG skimmed over this list.
9 – “Out at dinner, massage him over his pants — stop when he becomes hard. You want him to squirm throughout the meal like a two-year-old who needs to pee.”
13 – “Lie across an ottoman, and tell him, ‘Professor Wankerton, I’ve been bad and need a spanking.'”
15 – “Instruct him to wrap your chest and torso in plastic wrap and touch you through it — the muted sensation feels amazeballs.”
When you googlize the phrase “cosmopolitan bdsm,” the results are painful. Cosmopolitan.uk reports “Cupid.com have surveyed 2,000 dating Brits and found couples are not quite as prudish and ‘vanilla’ in the bedroom as we first thought thanks to the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon.”
A blog chimes in, Cosmo Has Some Terrible 50 Shades Of Grey Inspired BDSM Tips For You To Try. “What happens when the towering work of literature that is 50 Shades Of Grey collides with the erotic genius of Cosmo? A list of sex tips that would make Christian Grey jizz all over himself! I mean, assuming he likes ice cubes on his dick or eating food off his lady. Because all editions of Cosmo must contain at least one reference to each of those things. It’s in the bylaws.”
The Cosmonut Strikes Back (Emma Goldman’s materialistic lovechild) is a blog with a cool template, which PG might want to use at Chamblee54. (The template would reduce the picture width by 80 pixels. It is not going to happen.) The article about Cosmo was not very good.
The last thing published there is My beer is taunting me. “I bought myself a sixer of Magic Hat No. 9 yesterday, and I discovered that the bottlecaps include little phrases on them. My first one said “You need to write more” The second said “Heed the Spirit. If You can Hear It” The third said “Don’t hex what’s best” My personal favorite read “You were expecting something funny?” No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t even expecting my beer to tell me to write more. Which I’m doing, obviously.”
Another blog chiming in is Evil Slutopia: Home of the evil slut clique. “After years and years of boring repetetive sex tips and describing the “tie your man’s wrists with a silk scarf” trick as the most outrageous, naughtiest sex act ever, Cosmopolitan magazine has decided to endorse bondage… sort of. Yes, the April 2011 issue of Cosmo actually has the words “KINKY SEX” on its cover!”
This trendy sadism is usually blamed on Fifty Shades of Grey. It turns out that FSOG is sort of a publishing phenomenon. It was an internet “fanfic” that went intensely commercial. Obsidian Wings has a three part series about FSOG. Publishing may never be the same. (Spell check suggestions for FSOG: FOG, FROG, FLOG, SOGGY)
So, we need to consider the book before this post goes on too much more. PG has not read it, and there is little chance that he will. The next quote is part of a one star review at amazon. It seems like the author likes repetition.
*UPDATE*: Thanks to the many other perturbed readers who have shared their own choices of the most annoyingly overused phrases in this masterpiece. Following up on their suggestions with my ever-useful Kindle search function, I have discovered that Ana says “Jeez” 81 times and “oh my” 72 times. She “blushes” or “flushes” 125 times, including 13 that are “scarlet,” 6 that are “crimson,” and one that is “stars and stripes red.” (I can’t even imagine.) Ana “peeks up” at Christian 13 times, and there are 9 references to Christian’s “hooded eyes,” 7 to his “long index finger,” and 25 to how “hot” he is (including four recurrences of the epic declarative sentence “He’s so freaking hot.”). Christian’s “mouth presses into a hard line” 10 times. Characters “murmur” 199 times, “mutter” 49 times, and “whisper” 195 times (doesn’t anyone just talk?), “clamber” on/in/out of things 21 times, and “smirk” 34 times. Christian and Ana also “gasp” 46 times and experience 18 “breath hitches,” suggesting a need for prompt intervention by paramedics. Finally, in a remarkable bit of symmetry, our hero and heroine exchange 124 “grins” and 124 “frowns”… which, by the way, seems an awful lot of frowning for a woman who experiences “intense,” “body-shattering,” “delicious,” “violent,” “all-consuming,” “turbulent,” “agonizing” and “exhausting” orgasms on just about every page.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.