Category Archives: Specifically Steff

Am I Really Channelling Dorothy Parker?

Watching Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart this morning had me waxing nostalgic on my Twitter feed.


smuttysteff I think I was born in the wrong decade. I think I should’ve been some bitchy vixen singing jazz in the ’30s.
smuttysteff The kind who laughed and blew smoke in mens’ faces. Yup.
DavidStephenson @smuttysteff No, you’re channeling Dorothy Parker http://tinyurl.com/2ml5ae
smuttysteff @DavidStephenson I’m channelling Dorothy Parker? Let’s hope I skip the alcoholism, depression, and lonely, bitter death, then, eh? 🙂

It’s funny, you know. Dorothy Parker was known for her caustic way, her incredible essays and other writing, her brilliant witty but cutting use of language, and when she got old, she got all depressed that she was just a “wisecracker” and more or less drank her way out of this life.
It reminds me, really, of when I was younger, around 19 or 20, when I was super-popular and everybody’s friend, thanks to my wise-cracking ways that everyone loved, of a dream I had one night that pretty much literally changed me forever. Continue reading →

When Life Changes The Game On You

We don’t always like who we become as a result of the situations life forces us into.
I’m not enjoying either my life or who I’ve been of late. I’ve had back issues now for a month. My back has never been a problem for more than three or four days. A month? For three weeks now I’ve been sprawled most of my waking hours on my floor. I’ve had to ask friends to run for groceries, and I’ve even begged them to clean my place, take my laundry down, and more. To call this injury “debilitating” for at least two of the four weeks, even until this past weekend, would not be overstating it.
An injury like this is a lesson in how to lose your pride, and fast.
I had a low moment, several of them, yesterday. Continue reading →

So Much For That

I was so looking forward to coming home and writing Friday night, but wound up being pretty much in agony with back pain exacerbated by period cramps until Sunday morning. I’ve had better weekends.
And you’ve had better Mondays, because this leaves you with nothing to read when you’re supposed to be working for a living. Dammit!
Foiled by the universe again.
My back has improved considerably since yesterday morning, though. Graduating from somewhere near “agonizing” to merely “sucking ass totally”, but, believe you me, that’s not just mere semantics — that’s change! And I’ll take it.
I have nothing else to really report, except I got this comment yesterday from someone who’s all pissed I had the gall to do the lame-ass “you can donate to my PayPal” request on my birthday posting, and also totally chewed me out for chewing out someone who left a comment, since I should apparently just delete comments instead of chewing the person out.
What fun is that, though? I have a million arguments on why that posting deserved reaming in particular, but I deleted yesterday’s comment, so I won’t bother with specifics. Hey, he more or less told me to do so. I aim to please.
But let’s say two things here and now. If I want to be a loser and ask for money, since you never know if you don’t try, that’s my prerogative. I’m the stupid fuck who’s whiling away MY life to write this blog, so why not ask for reward? I’ve been broke off my fucking ass all year, so why the hell NOT ask for money? If you laugh at it, GREAT, because I’m being half tongue-in-cheek about it. If you donate, then holy shit, awesome! If you ignore it, all the power to you. Who gives a fuck? But to waste time getting RILED because I’m being a goof? Well, that’s your prerogative, but don’t expect me to care.
Oh, and never mind that I spend a couple hundred bucks a year on hosting fees or countless hours writing. I work for a living, too, you know. Clearly *my* time isn’t worth anything so long as you have your 2.3 minutes worth of reading. Fucking hell.
And, finally, if you don’t like my writing, don’t waste my time, and don’t waste yours. Go read someone else. Seriously. Life’s too fucking short. For either of us.
I learned a long time ago — all the things that piss people off about me are the things others come to love about me. So I’d rather keep it simple, be myself, and worry about the select people who actually can like someone who’s an acquired taste as much as I am, and fuck the rest. Because life’s too short.
Oh, and this guy gave me hell for trying to be the ruler of The Internetz. Um, I’m not, dude. But it’s my blog. I used to call it The Cunting Linguist. Do you really think I’m all about sunshine and roses, pleases and thank yous? No, I can be a cunt. It’s what I do. I can be a bitch here as much as I like. See the quote on the bottom of my sidebar? When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it? Right.
And if not, then there’s the door.

Of Rainy Days, Write Nights, And Kissing Boys

Oh! The rain is pounding the streets as car tires slap-slap-slap their way over the busy streets near my home. I’ve hit bottom on my coffee mug and should be zapping to the door, but first need to get the funk out with a long hot shower.
I’m bussing in the downpour. Tonight I’ll come home armed with a bottle of wine. I’m sequestering myself for some writing. I like to bottle it up sometimes, like sexual tension. When you don’t write for a while, it comes a little harder, a little faster, a little more furious, sometimes longer. I’m getting to that bursting point.
The great dead Canuck writer Robertson Davies once uttered that a writer ought not write until the thought of not writing becomes unbearable. I give in so much to the want to write that I seldom know the fit-to-burst waiting-for-it sensation. And like with sex, a little deprivation can go a long, long ways to making things fun again.
But I know the writing desire will hit before I return home this evening. I can feel it percolating.
Now, that doesn’t mean I’ll write worth a shit. It could all be recycled pretentious crap. But I’d rather hope for the best.
Whatever to write on, though? I’m torn between the right-wing idiots who’ve been writing on my blog of late, or matters of lust and longing that have begun to appear in my life. I’m leaning toward the matters of the heart, though, as we’ve all probably been getting our fill of politics of late. After all, I still haven’t told you about the fantastic makeout session I had just before my back gave out on me. Literally RIGHT before. Talk about the agony and the ecstasy. Love me a great makeout session. Three hours on the floor, well.
Speaking of which, to say I’m keen to see this boy again is a bit of an understatement. Perhaps the word “riled” might be more befitting. I had dirty notions that such an encounter might come my way this weekend, now that my back’s healing. What happens then? I get my period last night, a few days early. Talk about getting a red flag on the play(ing). God.
Ah well. Yes, working for a living is a foolish, foolish thing. If ever a girl deserved to be independently wealthy and work-free, this would be she. I could blog to my heart’s content. And putter about my home. And make boys call in sick to work to while away a dirty, dirty day.
But. Sadly I’m a working girl, and this girl’s finally going to scrub up and get out the door to the office. Tonight, a write night. I love a Friday night write night with good wine. Of the simple “me” things that keep my life mine, it’s one of my favourites.

A Brief Bit of Reflection

[Ed Note: Just a reminder– This URL is NOT permanent; I’ll be back on www.smutandsteff.com before you know it. Do not adjust yer feeds or bookmarks.]

Adversity is like eating your vegetables; it can often be unpleasant and may even leave a bad taste in your mouth, but it makes you grow big and strong.
There’s nothing like getting interrupted on your path of positivity to a new and better you only to be thrown into a time reminiscent of the worst years of your life. A big reminder of from whence you’ve come can serve to recharge the batteries and fire up the will.
The last two weeks I’ve spent sprawled upon my back as my body rebelled against me for all the working out I’ve done this year — hours and hours of yoga, 1300+ kilometres of cycling, 40,000+ steps climbed in highrises, all since March, with much of the last three months interrupted by physical problems — have given me the opportunity to do a lot of thinking.
I’m still stuck in the whirlwind of mental processing that comes with change and turbulence for me, and while I can cut through it during a political rant, any kind of introspective writing has me hitting a lot of brick walls right now. It’s just how I roll. Continue reading →

HI! Welcome, Welcome, Welcome!

I’ve been in hiding! I’ve finally fooled the Feds and I can come out from behind the watercooler! Schwing!
Okay, no, my URL has been all fucked up and because Blogger is a finicky CUNT, I somehow got locked out of my FTP log-in, despite changing passwords to be identical about a million times.
I’ve been in post-withdrawal hell! Fuck!
FIRST THINGS FIRST: Do not change your bookmarks! Do not change your RSS feed subscription address! CHANGE NOTHING. Before you know it, I’ll be back home on SmutandSteff.com. You’re at SmuttySteff.com temporarily because I wanted you readers back and because I don’t want you thinking I’ve abandoned all y’all. We’re waiting for site propagation now, and then everything will be done in a couple days. And everything will be back to normal… but sexier! Look at this place!
But, really, Blogger probably did us all a big favour. I would have just whined at you the last two weeks.
I’ve been off work with a blown back since October 3rd. It got worse the next four days as I sank into the worst physical pain of my life. It’s slowly (I mean SLOWLY) improved since Thursday, but I’m still kinda a mess, and a return to work looms in mere hours.
Still, look! A fabulous new home. Come on, tell me how much you love the new layout. 🙂 Plus, now powered by WordPress plug-ins, I’ve got “CommentLuv” enabled so it’ll whore your most recent blog post (if you want it to) underneath your name whenever you leave me a comment. See? I get comment love, and you get blog visit love. How cool is that?
Samantha and Ang are my heroines who saved me from WordPress migration hell and some seriously fucked up server chaos. Thanks, ladies. You make me swoon!
Now, you could have been following my drug-induced painkiller ramblings on Twitter had you been following my feed during all this. Or you could have even followed all the drama in bringing this site live. But without subscribing to my Twitter, you’d never have known about why I hadn’t posted in 10 days. Now, though, you can follow me on Twitter through the sidebar, or subscribe. Crazy, I know.
Finally, be patient with me. It’s going to take me about three or so weeks perhaps to finish off the fine details of the transfer — all the archival tagging, categorizing, and link-repairing — required to get this blog up to its full WordPress power. Links have changed in the transfer, tags have been lost, categories never existed. Soon my whole backlog, including ALL my work I ever wrote on The Cunting Linguist and all the 3600+ comments left on there for me, will be entirely searchable by subject, category, related articles, keyword, and chronology. With 1,000 posts on every topic imaginable, it’s time I have such search power behind my wee blog.
Like I say: CHANGE NOTHING. I’ll be sorting all that out, but at least you can read me in the meantime.
Together again, minions! We’re together again.
Note to universe: This wasn’t what I had in mind when I was thinking lately that I’d like to spend a little more time on my back. Shit. 10 days of lying on the floor? Thank god THAT’s coming to an end. Now, I need me a little other action on my floor, thankyouverymuch.
Note to YOU: There’s a lot of content from August 2005 to January 2007 that has never seen the light of day on Smut and Steff, it’s all original to The Cunting Linguist and never was entirely brought over. The comments are ALL there, finally, so there might be some fun to be had by surfing the much-more-complete archives — which needs to be tagged and categorized, but hey. Gimme time!

Some Pre-Birthday Thoughts on a Busy Friday Morning

After a couple months of everything in life feeling like it was a little harder than it needed to be, and life just throwing one sucker punch after another, it feels like the proverbial clouds have parted and ease is raining down upon me.
My week has been busy, as will the next few days be, too. My mind’s not on sex, not on writing, so I’m just taking a moment to share before the craziness comes down.
Some family’s coming to visit me this weekend, as I secretly suspect my aunt wants to shower a little money on me after having lost 45+ pounds this year. I was laughing on the phone with her last weekend, saying how I’ve suspended my weight-loss campaign (before McCain’s “suspension madness”) because I can’t afford the clothes I need for my new body, let alone a skinnier one, so I’ve pushed the pause button for the last couple months. All of a sudden I get this phone call last night saying they’re coming to town and seeing me for the first time in two years. I can’t help but smell a shopping trip. (Please, Cosmos?)
Monday I turn 35. Wow! The end of an era. The end of being in that coveted 18-34 demographic. I will officially be out of the realm of cool. And I couldn’t care less. Continue reading →

My Bad, Bad Week: More Than You Need To Know

I couldn’t possibly feel more unattractive than I do today. Except maybe if I had an 8-inch goiter growing out of my neck and crumbling teeth or something.
I have an eye infection that has my left eye with this just-throttled-by-Rocky swollen-bloodshot look going on. That’s fun. Really.
Because that wasn’t fun enough, I’ve also come down with a vaginal yeast infection. (I’m so not even thinking about men right now, or sex, or arousal, or orgasms.)
Throw in the fact that I’ve just found out these ARE cockroaches in my apartment — German ones.
(My Twitters upon learning this were: “But it’s official. They were cockroaches. German Cockroaches. SS cockroaches. Brownshirts. Bad! They should have been gassed. Karma!” Followed by, “Snell! Snell! Achtung, roach! Achtung! At least now I know their language. “Ich liebe gas!”)
Continue reading →

A Little Reflection in the Morning

A year ago this week, I was hanging on with the grimmest, thinnest of threads, as I completed the last week on a job I probably never should have accepted.
I worked in close quarters with one of the most negative, depressing people I’ve ever known, for six long months. By the end of it, I’d gained 20 pounds and found myself being a constant complainer, just like that toxic person I was working with. I hated who I had become.
My old employers offered me my old job back, which was nice of them since I’d been a bit of a flake in the two years preceding, but I guess I’m more charming than I know.
I promised myself, upon returning to my old job, that I’d take it with the intention of improving every area of my life.*
I’ve done that. Yesterday I was a bit down, thinking how much I’ve blown the last couple of months, fit-wise, and how much more I could have accomplished. This morning I’d been trying to tell myself that, sure, I could have accomplished more, but what I have accomplished is pretty darned good.
But remembering this week last year, that really put a grin on my face. The closer I got to my last day on the job, the more and more I realized how much I was doing the right thing. I just up and realized how much I hated being around that toxicity, and how much I loathed feeling like my life was owned by work. My entire life had become devoured by my job.
In fact, that was true even to the point that they had found out about my blog, and not once but twice said, “Well, we know you blog about sex. This isn’t good. We’re not sure what we think yet. Don’t ever write about work. And be careful what you write about.” Continue reading →

And Then It Was Monday

Hi, kids. We haven’t had a catch-up chat for a while, have we?
I’d love to have something brilliant to write for you today. Really. I got nothing. So you can leave now if it’s profundity you seek. For you, good lasses and sirs, I offer a serving of vapidity.
See, I spent my whole weekend huffing Lysol, questing to kill bugs, and doing one of the deepest apartment cleans ever (but there’s still more work to do — the storage unit, cleaning the oven… does it ever end?). Mental faculties? Not so much.
I do, however, have a faint eau de sterilized green apple Lysol-ly scent wafting off me this morning. I’m fresh AND germ-free! And I think I still hear braincells popping off to their chemically-induced deaths in the back of my cerebellum. “No, Lenny! Don’t jump! The air’s clearing, really!”
Curse you, bugs, for the damage thou hath wrought upon me!
And despite wanting to turtle naked and lazily under my blankie as the warm sun beats down on me in bed as the should-be ease of this day washes over me, the reality is, I’m pretty close to hopping on my bike to suffer another 45 minutes of labour as I moan and groan my way up the steep-ass hills of this town on my way in to what will finally be some PAID work. For seven hours. Followed by more cycling.
Today could well be the last hot day of the year. Hopefully not. But it’d be wrong to let it pass by without sucking the marrow from it and enjoying every last bead of sweat I can muster out of this late-season gift .
My “kicking ass and taking names” summer became derailed after July 17th, when I came down with bad bronchitis that kept me from cardio for nearly a month. I had one valiant week then where I cycled four times in mid-August, but then I got insomnia, where I had 40 hours sleep in about 15 nights, followed by a week at work with overtime. Needless to say, I haven’t found my rhythm in weeks.
I did get a good cycling week in last week but had aimed for four days of it, but saw Mr. Cockroach on Thursday night and resolved to do the Molly Maid/Rambo thing this weekend instead. Again, derailed. Three’s good, though, and I can make this week a second in a row.
It’s Monday now, a whole new week, and no matter how much it kills me, it’s on, baby. Music’s recharging, cycle bag’s packed, sun’s stoking the fire. It’s a great day for it.
I found myself thinking a lot about when I did a cleaning frenzy like this in March, though, when I totally gutted and cleaned my place, and resolved to spend the next six months being very active. I did a pretty good job of it — the cleaning and the six months. So I found myself perceiving my weekend as a setting of the stage upon which the next six months of life will unfold.
It’s a pretty great way to get perspective on blowing away one of the nicest sunny September weekends I ever recall in Vancouver.
Vancouver, for those who don’t know, vacillates between a sunshiney Eden and the downpours of the most urban rainforest in the world. Surrounded by impressive mountains yielding insane snowboarding within 10 minutes of downtown, the local geography hems in any rainclouds — the weather amassed from the long journey over the Pacific, usually up from Hawaii, falls down on this often-soggy urban jewel before the clouds weaken and leave the for the Prairies, which will be left arid, on their travels eastward. “September” is often something not to be banked upon in this town — make sure your travel agent knows. Summer ostensibly ends August 25th because the rain can come early and hard, and stay for months. If you think that’s writerly hyperbole, then go look up the definition of “temperate rainforest”, by which should be a picture of southwest British Columbia.
Today? Sunny and 24/80 degrees. Tomorrow, a little cooler. By Thursday, rain. Will sun return? A Vancouverite never knows. Hope, however, we collectively practice.
So, today I ride. Carpe diem.
I’m consciously getting my game back on over the next couple weeks. My 35th birthday’s on the 29th. You should donate a birthday gift to my PayPal account so I can buy some wine and panties. Priorities being what they are and all. 🙂
Love your blogger! Feed her! Get her drunk! One reader claims to be sending me BDSM toys. I say, bring it on!
I do digress! Anyhow. Dating: I actually have more men in the wings these days, about four or five, and with this great late September weather, I’m not interested in dating at all. I want to get my mojo back, feel like I’m back on my path to fitness. But the question is, can I string ’em along? Should I? Dare I? Usually doesn’t work well. But perhaps I’m not the only one not wanting to squander these last days of summer.
It’s a shame I’ve forsaken such a blissful 48 hours in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But I feel like this place I’m in this morning, this verge I’m on with what seems to be another exciting chapter of life about to unfold, is a place I’d have gladly paid money to get to. Instead, admission was a fevered weekend of cleaning. C’est la vie.
And if you’re wondering where I’m at with weight? No clue. I don’t care. Once I’m back on path, I’ll check it out. I don’t feel like I’ve gained or lost. I think I’m in limbo. Considering all the chorizo and goat’s cheese I enjoyed on the weekend, “limbo” has been working for me. 🙂
Happy Monday, y’all. Why don’t you, too, try to suck the marrow out of your day in some way? Take five to do something you deserve. Life’s too fucking short. Even on Mondays.
PS: Unfortunately, people really are THIS stupid.