A few years ago in an attempt to get over a string of bad "relationships", I created the Gestalt Madlibs Project. Rather than leave the letters unsent, this time I emailed them to everyone. Each participant received an email that began like this...

You have been selected to participate in the Gestalt Madlibs Project.
This project is one aspect of the three-part No More initiative, where I stop being bored, stop taking shit, and move on with my life.

This was followed by a paragraph telling them exactly what I'd been wanting to tell them. Some people, like my friend Patrick, got really nice mails. Most people didn't.

I decided tonight that the time has come for Part Deux. So I set up an email account. For all of us! You can email it from another account, or through the miracle of modern technology, you can just email "yourself" from inside the account. Be anonymous. Or not. For the love of god, use this when you are tempted to drunk dial/email. Write in English or another language. You can probably even chat if you want to.

Feel free to send pictures or images to illustrate your mails. Part Three might be some sort of compilation. We'll see.

Login: gestaltmadlibspart2@gmail.com
Password: lonelyheart
Security Question/Answer: What's the secret to all great relationships?/Communication

For those of you seeking advice more than catharsis, why not use this email account to email Patrick at Chivalry.

The Holocaust is obviously one of the most horrific events in human history. It silenced millions and created a black hole in European cultural history. As such, whenever anyone brings it up it just stops the argument.

As metaphors "Holocaust", "Nazi", and "Hitler" are so fraught with meaning, that they are rarely used with actual seriousness. When a teenager says, "my mom is such a Nazi today" he's more likely to mean, "my mom has a lot of rules and won't let me take the car" than "my mother is rounding up my Jewish friends, gassing them, and turning their skin into lampshades."

Because Nazi, Hitler, and Holocaust are such loaded terms, it irritates me to no end when people use them seriously to describe something, like the Bush Administration, that simply doesn't compare in sheer horror, scope, or magnitude. It's just not the same thing. Hitler ≠ George Bush. For five principle reasons.

1. George Bush is not as intelligent, calculating, or just plain organized as Hitler. Were he, Afghanistan and Iraq would already be sorted. A more efficient and Hitler-esque thing to do would be to, with the help of other residents, completely obliterate the most "troublesome" ethnic groups in these areas, and then move on. I feel that the same people that would happily call George Bush an idiot are saying he's the new Hitler. The two are mutually exclusive. George Bush isn't as clever as Hitler.

2. Part of the reason people Hitler rose to power was because Germans in the 1930s were absolutely desperate. The economy was a disaster. Their sense of nationalism was crushed. The whole Nationalsocialist movement started out as something to rejuvenate the homeland. Our economic conditions, while crappy, are not comparable to 1930s Germany. Were George Bush truly Hitler reincarnate, he probably would've tried to do something about our economy, all the while blaming a minority group. Hispanic migrant workers might be a good target. Blacks might also be good because of their success in sports and entertainment. 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina did jump start our sense of national pride, but that had less to do with George Bush and more to do with that damn Jewel song.

3. Bush is an ideological imperialist. I don't really see Hitler that way. In my mind, the Bush Administration probably has more in common with other imperialist governments, perhaps England in India, Belgium in the Congo. (Aside: why are people so convinced that democracy is the perfect fit for everyone? Good Lord! Sans centuries of Western philosophy we wouldn't conceptualize the individual and her place in society in a way that supports democracy. So why do we expect people in the Middle East to?)

4. A failed artist himself, Hitler really used arts and culture to further his agenda. Yeah, there's a little bit of conservative propaganda out there, but it simply can't compare to the propaganda machine that Hitler utilized. The Third Reich had things like the Entartete Kunst exhibition and Leni Reifenstein's films. The Bush Administration coined the term "freedom fries". There's really no comparison.

5. Hitler never had a "we're going to help the Jews" slant to things. We purported to at least have a positive purpose in Iraq. Maybe this is ignorant, but I really believe that George Bush had the Iraqui's better interests in mind. Not as a primary interest, but I think he truly believed that there would be at least some indirect benefits to the people of Iraq. He is a born-again Christian, after all. (Smirk)

Barack Obama is now the democratic nominee. Personally, I preferred Hilary. I think she probably knows more about what it's actually like to be the President, and if she sucks, well, I'm sure Bill could give her some pointers. It's like two for the price of one! And the woman has clearly has stamina.

That said, Obama is daaaaaaaamn inspiring. Seriously. Every time he opens his mouth out come rainbows of hope and inspiration.

We need to start having some Real Talk about why we support certain candidates. Issues are secondary--we support the candidate that best embodies our idealized version of ourselves. It's why Bob Dole lost to Clinton, and why Nixon lost to Kennedy.

A quick glance at McCain's website makes it clear that he's not the candidate for the cool. He's rocking an ugly seriffed font, he has a tacky starry background, and that photo is not flattering.

Obama, on the other hand, IS ON TWITTER.

No one wants to think of him/herself as an aging, military leader who resembles an albino beaver. No! We want to think of ourselves as hopeful, multicultural, photogenic, and possessing superior taste in graphic design. Obama embodies the America that Gen X/Yers want to be.

Puerto Ricans love to sneak some food into a movie theater. When my mother was growing up in Spanish Harlem, folks used to put a whole pizza or even a turkey into a baby carriage, cover it up with a blanket, and stroll that shit right in. Years later, my mom rationalizes breaking the rules with the fact that her snacks are healthier than anything you can buy at the theater. My aunt and I just like to feel naughty. And we're cheap.

As a veteran food sneak: Here's a tip from me to you. Be careful with Qdoba burritos in the theater. Seems like a great idea, right? Well, it is if you want to find sticky rice encrusted to the ass of your jeans afterwards. I removed the foil because it was making so much noise, and a ton of shit fell out. No worries, Guy Behind Me. Nothing pervy going on here. I'm just picking fallen black beans and grains of rice out of my crotch. I could barely enjoy it worried as I was about the sound and the smell.

Instead, sneak this:

• Homemade popcorn. Obvious.


• If you're at Woodland - guac and chips from the Tex-Mex restaurant nearby; Godiva chocolates


• Knapp - Crackerjack, Café Solace comfort cookies, and Ben & Jerry's from Meijer (Just make sure you can eat an entire pint or have someone to share it with. A half-pint of soupy, melted ice cream will totally blow your cover)


• Bring your own water. Seriously.


• Leftover pizza


• Sushi (careful with the soy sauce!)

Men seem to have picked up the generally erroneous belief that women have orgasms every time they have sex and that to bring a woman to orgasm all you need to do is thrust lustily for about five minutes while moaning excitedly. I can only assume they are getting this information from movies.

Now. If men can learn this from movies and possibly porn, how come they're not learning about kissing from movies? I'm not even talking about romantic comedies. Kissing in action movies is pretty good, and everybody knows men love action movies. Men in movies are good kissers. They hold the head, a personal favourite, and kiss passionately without being overly tonguey and wet. James McAvoy, of course, looks like an ideal kisser.

You never see a lot of saliva in movies. Excepting that one kiss in the Matrix. So why is it that there are still men that bathe your entire face with their tongue? It's like they're dogs on a really thirsty day trying to lap up that last drop of water from their doggie bowl. They pull away looking so proud of themselves.

I feel like as a g-rad community we need to address this problem. I think everyone should write about some of their best and worst kisses. What made them great, what made them awful. I'll get the ball rolling with Filipe at Cambridge House...

For years Filipe was totally unattracted to me. I was his sister's frumpy, crazy roommate. Then one day he realized that I wasn't "hamburger after all, but really good steak!" A comparison to beef is not lost on me: I was more attracted to him than even, especially because he liked me against his will.

He didn't trust us alone together, so we went out. I wore pink pants and cute sandals. He felt short. We sat in a dark wooden booth. Leaning into our cosmopolitan and beer, our faces got close. We were having a conversation about how we weren't going to kiss when he started touching my collarbone. He slipped his hand under my hair behind my neck and pulled me closer to him. I was totally kissing before I knew I was kissing!!! Sneaky! Yay!!

The best kisses are the ones that keep going, at the bar, on the way to the car, in the car, I think we might have even pulled over to kiss. Or for me to pee outside the hospital. Unsure.

Key lessons: collarbone, smooth neck move, if at all possible be Brazilian

STARTER FOR TEN
So, so good.1 I love, love, loved this movie! James McAvoy is so eager and adorable. You agonize over his every social faux pas, and rejoice in every geeky triumph. As a long-time lover of geeks (no, seriously), I so have a soft spot for the i-never-realized-how-good-looking-i-actually-am smart guys.

There is so much in this movie that rings true about college idealism and that freshman social learning curve. There are so many great details--from scammy roommates to the guy that's given up toilet paper for environmental reasons--that just take you back. (Shotgun, anyone?)

LAST KING OF SCOTLAND
All I can say is, don't watch this before bed. I did, and I totally regretted it. It's violent, but it's the steadily mounting tension that really gets you wound up. James (I'm tired of typing "McAvoy". We're officially on a first name basis.) in all his cute-bottomed-rosy-faced Scottishness, is the perfect foil for Forest Whitaker's exuberant and volatile Idi Amin. The tension starts visually: there's the obvious physical contrast between their size, colouring, and carriage. James's personality - dominated by roguish charm and frank immaturity - somehow makes the revelation of Amin's crazy all the more jarring. From the beginning you know everything you love about James McAvoy will be his undoing (well, you do if your friend Bridie movie storied2 you the whole thing during your workout). Passion, idealism, and optimism are the flip sides of impulsivity, ill-informed decisions, and misplaced trust. James is just so damned likable though, you keep wanting to rescue him from his coquettish3, over-confident self.

This movie also contains primo James McAvoy sex. I am not gonna lie. That sex scene in the cave room is totally hot. Way hotter than Atonement, y'all. Probably because it's so, so illicit and ill-advised. I want to scream "Don't do it, James McAvoy and Idi Amin's wife! Clearly, this will not end well!" Though, let's face facts... The threat of a painful death at the hands of my crazed dictator-husband probably wouldn't stop me from fucking James against a rock wall either. (Hey, where the heck was that place?)

WANTED
Speaking of a slow and painful death... Wanted. Dear God. I want that two hours of my life back. Until Wanted, there have only been two occasions where I have actually hated a movie so much that I wanted to get up and leave the theater.4

Repetitively boring violence, Angelina's Grotesque Mouth, and the soundtrack are just the tip of the iceberg of things to hate about Wanted. (About thirty minutes in, I was already thinking "If I have to see one more person get shot in the head...") The most irritating thing about this movie is the quasi-morality used to rationalize violence. We just love to watch a flawed-yet-sexy hero dole out vigilante justice to avenge some sort of heinous crime against a child or a long-lost parent.5 Wanted cleverly incorporates both child and long lost parent, making James's final march of fury all the more justifiable.

i'm going to bitch about that for a while now. i'm suddenly so annoyed by this that i can't sleep.

tonight i spoke with a woman who wasn't planning on changing her name, then did because "she'd never seen her husband get so emotional". she had planned to keep her name, which indicated her italian heritage, but she gave it up. she's changing her middle name to her maiden name. there are now only 9 people across the u.s. that have her original last name.

(even the term "maiden name"! what the fuck is that?! the name that you had before you had sex? the name you lose now that your-sexual-partner-for-life owns you?)

i can see changing your name if your husband has a really awesome last name, and you've never liked yours. i've occasionally thought of "trading up" my last name for a hispanic last name, since my current one says nothing about my ethnicity. i just don't understand the view (which my mother holds) that changing your last name to his is your duty when starting a new family. yeah, i get that it's nice to have a new name for your new family, but why does it always have to be his? why is it obvious that the man shouldn't give up his name?

(after 30 years of marriage, my father is divorcing my mother. she has had his name for longer than she had her own. she's not changing it back. we're still a family because of me, and she wants us all to share a name.)

this article was interesting. not sure i actually agree, but whatevs.

another issue here for me is ownership. i got my last name from my father, and his family most likely got their britishy last names from a slaveowner. my current surname is already a product of subjugation, i'm not changing it for another repressive institution (because i'm soooo likely to get married).

i am a little bummed out that my neither my first name nor my last indicate anything about my hispanic heritage. my first name is practically devoid of ethnicity, being virtually unpronounceable in most major languages.

i have no idea why i'm so angry about this. after watching my parents divorce and observing my friend's relationships, i just feel like men really don't always appreciate what women give up to be their girlfriends, wives, and mothers. and i'm pissed that social norms (not to mention religion) perpetuate this. how often do you hear of men moving because their wife got a job? changing their name to their wife's on wedding day? waiting patiently alone indefinitely because their girlfriend took a job in another state, and they're just waiting to be with them? leaving their jobs because they wanted children? rarely.

another thing to check out is the actual rowster website. i especially enjoyed the section on coffee 101. turns out i didn't know what coffee beans actually were.

"...wimbledon."
"precisely. where the coffee beans come from."

-- elinor dashwood and edward ferrars, sense and sensibility

i was entirely unprepared for the amount of walking i would be doing in berlin. on the plus side, my riding boots are now completely broken in, and i have increased my threshold for pain.

I didn't really have a good reason for this. I know you all think I was out every night dancing my face off and bumping lines of speed off a (law-abiding!) German hooker's ass, but really I was either:

A) experiencing a bit of stomach sickness;
B) walking around in the rain/sleet/snow;
C) embarrassing myself with my complete lack of German language skills; or
D) all of the above

The classic example of D) was my first trip to the grocery store...

My stomach was upset, so I decided to walk to the grocery store to purchase some tummy-friendly food (yogurt, bread, bananas). First problem: I can't find the food. Patrick told me it was on the lower level, but I can't find the way downstairs. I finally locate the escalator down and - lo and behold! - it's not an escalator at all! It's that same metal, but there are no stairs! Sneaky! I almost slide right off it. I get to the bottom safe and sound, then I realize baskets and carts are upstairs.

About five minutes into my shopping, I am really hitting my stride. Just moseying along, looking at things... All of a sudden a voice comes through the loudspeaker. The only thing I understand is "10". I assume the voice has just said "the store is closing in 10 minutes." I'm running through the produce department, trying to finish shopping and get out before they close.

I'm dreading the checkout. I'm worried I won't have enough cash, and I don't dare use my credit card. The check out lady is ringing me through, then she sees my fruit and says something in German. "I'm sorry. I don't speak German". Through a series of elaborate hand gestures, she communicates that you're supposed to weigh produce before you get to the register. A really hot guy joins the growing line behind me. I start to sweat. I have no idea what to do. I don't see a scale anywhere. Thankfully, the woman gets another attendant to weigh the fruit and print out the little barcode stickers.

I finish checking out; I have enough cash. Everything's OK. I turn to walk away when, in a totally surprise move, the woman behind me snatches the receipt from my hand, then starts talking rapidly to the cashier in German. I'm confused. Hot Guy's amused ("Serves her right, damn monolingual Americans!"). The only thing I understand is "bananas". I finally piece together that I was charged incorrectly for my three bananas. The cashier asks another employee to take me to the customer service counter, where I wait for a fourth person to help me.

While I'm waiting, the man behind me says something to me in German. I smile and say, "Ich sprache keine Deutsch". Usually the fact that I bothered to learn "I don't speak German" in German curries some favour. Not so in this case. The man laughs in my face. In this case, "in" means a mere 12 inches or so away from me. (Now considering Berliners don't even crack a smile when you pass them on the street, the way they flout personal space rules is a bit surprising.) I have no idea why this is happening. Is it the fact that me saying "Ich sprache keine Deutsch" is rendered immediately redundant by my abysmal pronunciation? Or maybe he saw the whole fruit-weighing debacle moments earlier...

The shame of public humiliation was so not worth the $2 I was refunded for my bananas. Also, the store didn't close for another two hours.

James McAvoy is one of the great Scottish actors of our time. (And one of the only...? I can only think of about five Scottish actors right now.) His talent seems superior to that of his directors, as well as whoever decided what his hair should look like in the above films. He can flare his nostrils and pop the veins out on his forehead on cue. I stand mightily impressed.

The real beauty of James McAvoy is that he can go from being totally hot...

To totally not...

...before you can say "haggis".

MacBeth (part of the Shakespeare Retold series) is surprisingly good. James McAvoy plays a chef and does a really horrifying demonstration with a pig's head. The film is really bloody and violent, but this is mainly because much of it takes place in a restaurant kitchen. It's definitely worth seeing if you're a omnivorous foodie, if only to remind you of how distanced we are from our food. Another point in the film's favour is that James McAvoy has a Scottish accent. God, I could listen to a damn Scottish accent all day.

Though he's Scottish, he's had an English or American accent in all the other movies I've seen him in. I really don't know the point of the American accent in Penelope as there are many randomly British characters. The most interesting thing about Penelepe, besides Christina Ricci's prosthetic pig nose, is the set design. Her bedroom is amazing. It's kind of Willy Wonka-meets-Anthropologie. James McAvoy's flat oozes melancholy masculinity with dark oily wood and old leather. Mmm... Yummy!

Becoming Jane is a must-see for all those people who have seen all the Jane Austen adaptation--if only because you have, like myself, seen all those like 50 million times and you need to mix it up a bit. Anne Hathaway's possibly a bit too... eager, but fairly convincing nonetheless. (Convincing enough that I went out and bought myself a damn dip pen.) Be prepared to spend some time arguing with yourself about whether Anna Maxwell Martin is pretty or not. James McAvoy is, of course, amazing! He is most notably hot when boxing. His nearly translucent Scottish skin and wiry muscles are like an Eakins painting come to life. Watching him frolick about in whorehouses and fields with Joe Anderson is almost too good for this life.

Atonement was surprisingly long and dull. The first part of the movie is completely dominated by gratuitous close-ups of Keira Knightley's face. After the sex in the library (WHOOPS! SPOILER ALERT!), the whole thing really goes downhill. Quite literally, actually, as James McAvoy is pretty much walking about for the remainder of the film. As in Becoming Jane and Penelope, he's entirely convincing as totally masculine, yet totally sensitive. He's everything you want in a man, really: highly intelligent, wicked sense of humour, strong sense of duty, loyal, deeply passionate, and coordinated enough to ravage you on a bookshelf.

Unfortunately, the same genes that gave me a lovely head of curls also gave me a body pretty much covered with unwanted hair. The same people that are moved to impropriety by the hair on my head would undoubtedly be disgusted by my unwanted hair.

Thanks to the Vagina Monologues, we're all really comfortable talking about our vaginas now. (If mine were to get dressed, it might wear trousers and half-Windsor-knotted necktie.) The thing I don't think any woman is comfortable talking about yet is her unwanted body hair.

Yes, I called it "unwanted". I really wish I were enough of a feminist to want my unwanted hair. But what woman wants hair on her chin, neck, nipples, stomach, and/or bikini line? I have yet to meet someone that is so convicted about body image ideals and stuff that they sport the fringe with a bathing suit.

Since I was but a lass, I have been teased fairly mercilessly about my hair. The first person to notice the excess was my friend's cute older brother. He was 14 and I was 9 or 10, and he commented on my thick, dark leg hair. So I started shaving. It struck me as a little odd that he also had leg hair, but no matter, I just knew I wasn't supposed to.

There are some serious gender and - dare I say it - race/ethnicity issues at work here. At least in America, it's totally OK for men to have wherever they want it. Yeah, sure, there are guys who trim their business, but I think that's only because it makes the package look bigger. The only hair men aren't really allowed to have is back hair, and even then society often lets that slide. I mean, sure, we'll all quietly grossed out by the guy in the pool with back hair, but he just doesn't cause the stir that a woman with the pubic equivalent of Bozo the Clown would.

In terms of race/ethnicity, here's a newsflash: people that do not come from Northern/Western European backgrounds have more hair than those who do. The same way we got four times as much hair as you on our head is the same way we got it on other parts of our bodies. As a N/W European descended person, some of you may have noticed that your friends of colour have darker, coarser hair than you. Our body hair... also darker and coarser. Surprise!

I don't really get society's preoccupation with hairlessness. I mean, we don't live in a warm climate where hair is trapping all kinds of bodily odour. Even if we did, god knows Americans shower like constantly. Nor do we live in ancient Egypt where lice are a big issue.

When I was 16, I decided to stop shaving my legs and armpits. My dad was really upset. My mom wasn't too thrilled either. Dad felt that it demonstrated "poor hygiene". My mother agreed, but felt that it was poor hygiene for men too - that they should shave their legs and armpits too. Dad threatened to take me off the car insurance if I didn't start shaving again. Mom realized that this made no logical sense. Also, should her supposition that excess body hair traps odours be proven correct, she certainly didn't want to be stuck driving my stinky, hairy ass around. She put the kibosh on the argument with, "Artie! If your daughter wants to look like a hairy gorilla, fine!"

I'm really shy about my facial hair. Especially with men, because I know they pretty much all find it unattractive. My most positive facial hair experience was with my friend Sean, who noticed it while we were at Steak and Shake one night. His face lit up with realization and he smiled and said, "Do you have hair on your chin?" I said, "Yes" shyly, feeling embarrassed. He reached out and touched my face.

For years, I couldn't figure out where the hair on my chin and neck came from. My mother, from whom I inherited nipple hair and what I refer to as my "happy highway" had no facial hair. A few years ago, I was visiting my grandmother in D.C. I was looking through her cupboards and notice hair removal cream. I asked her about it, and she said she used it on her face. I looked and, sure enough, she had tiny white and silver curly hairs on her face and neck.