“The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.”
–Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation

I’m wearing my Jerri Blank pants of “I GOT SOMETHIN TO SAY” but whether or not it’s of any interest is an exercise for the reader. I’m doing better, with some fine-tuning. I was thinking this weekend that I am kind of like a fussy sports car in that everything has to go exactly right, but really I’m more like a broken-down jalopy. So we’re immediately back to Jerri Blank.

What this jalopy needed was MOAR magnesium and potassium. I had slacked off on it since I’m in a shiny modern office building all day again, but yep, I need to be sippin on it all day like orange chalky drank. Whatever works.

I doubt anyone who is reading this reads xojane, which is Jane Pratt’s web manifestation, but you never know. I think I have a nostalgia for Jane Pratt product, she of Sassy-inventing fame. I loved Sassy, and I know lots of women my age have said things like it caused them to be feminist/green-haired/political/whatever but I don’t know if it changed my life.

That’s not entirely true. It did introduce me to the concept of the reusable menstrual cup at an impressionable age. I think you do have to be at some kind of impressionable age to think that toting your own blood barge is a groovy idea. Also the idea that some women don’t shave. Ever. That was amazing, and I cravenly experimented with this bohemian lifestyle choice one winter. Unfortunately it led to a conversation on my one and only ski trip when my pant leg accidentally slid up and two inches of my offensive unshaven leg was on view for ten seconds that basically went like this:

Footballer: Do you think you’re like, a guy or something?

Me: No?

GENDER SHAMED! Also, this was freshman year, so it took a couple more years of rigorous Veronica Mars-sized trauma to go straight to the “FUCK OFF” or “I’LL CUT YOU BITCH” buttons. It is also important to note that I owned this PJ Harvey shirt and wore it well into my twenties until it smelled funny and become less a shirt and more a collection of holes. That was an important thing to do then.

Ultimately, I was kind of sad when I realized that Sassy was meant to have a clubby, inclusive, get-over-here-to-our-table-freak vibe that somehow felt exclusive to me. I imagined these writers were all sitting around braiding each other’s hair and drinking chamomile tea, and well, I knew I wasn’t there. They referenced each other by name in articles and I knew that they were talking to each other, not really to me. It was like reading a really nice slam book, but someone else’s slam book.

I picked up Jane Pratt’s next magazine, Jane, which in hindsight felt like the print version of xojane (albeit more milquetoast because of the nature of print vs. click mongering). I wanted a glossy estrojam but I couldn’t lower myself to buy the dominant, blatant paeans to capitalism and Pleasin Yr Man ™. I’ve done a total 180 on that one. I keep my ISSUES and GENDER and SEXUALITY and POLITICS out of my capitalism peanut butter. I haven’t set foot in a salon in months, sadly, but whenever I went I would go straight for Lucky or In Style. I want my lady mags STRAIGHT UP TRANSACTIONAL nowadays.

So sometimes when I am bored I will fuck off to xojane to see what Jane Pratt and her current stable of Manson Girls employees are up to. The site is being sold off, and it appears to be transitioning somehow, some say dying a rapid death due to commenter/click loss. I tried to comment for the first time the other day and was told my Disqus login was banned. Very weird! I had always entertained fantasies of writing one of their old-school-meets-new-school “It Happened to Me” confessionals, which was a hold over from the print days. Before, you know, those kind of tawdry confessionals were just a click of a publish button away. *cough*

But I dunno now, if I am randobanned, and it looks like the site is kind of dying. I think I’ll keep my eye on Jane Pratt, the way you do a batty old aunt. I still have the IHTM, I just want to give it the time it deserves, since I have to make dinner. It’s times like these I often think of Grace Metalious, so determined to write that she locked her children out. I don’t want to do that, but I would like to buy more time somehow.

In the meantime I guess I’ll just DEAL WITH IT.