My spirit animal is a sloth

I spent the last five days in Costa Rica. It was amazing. I stood at the lip of a volcano crater filled with mist, climbed through the jungle, ate plantain chips, drank Costa Rican wine, toured the Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica in San Jose, swam in a pool, visited a coffee plantation, and generally had a great time.

One of my favorite moments was seeing a pair of two-toed sloths, seen here via my iPhone. I had recently become a sloth fan, after seeing the sloth videos on VBS.TV, but it was wonderful to see them in person.

There were two sloths. Maybe a boy and a girl? And they were lounging on a platform on a tree. Occasionally, the one that was vaguely more active than the other would pull at the other sloth's arm, and then it spent a while poking around in the other sloth's butt fur. Their fur is sort of long and coarse, a bit like a horse's tail, but shorter.

Mostly, they were just chillin'. We speculated they had figured out their plan for the day that morning. "We'll lay about sort of upside down and play with one another's fur." And that's what they did.

There's a saying in Costa Rica which is "Pura Vida." It means a lot of things, from "This is living" to "Thank you." It is also about enjoying life slowly. When I returned, Siege asked me if I got my groove back, and I said yes.

I get email

"$1,000 paid via paypal for your used panties- Multiple pairs...."

Hire me

Today, I was downsized from my full-time job as an editor.

Now, I'm looking for a new full-time, part-time, or freelance job.

Can you help?

I am an experienced editor, journalist, blogger, publicist, online outreach coordinator, social media marketer, photographer, and machine-like content generator.

I am an excellent writer, a rock star traffic-generator, and a generally awesome person.

If you know of a part-time, full-time, or freelance opportunity, or if you know of someone who may know of one, I would love to hear from you.

EMAIL ME.

Here are some of my skills:

1. Freelance Journalist. For the last 15 years, I've been a freelance journalist. My primary beat is culture. I've covered everything from Hollywood to war to technology to movies to books to sex. I've been a movie critic, a book reviewer, and a dating columnist. I've written features, articles, listicles, essays, and more for magazines, newspapers, weeklies, and websites such as Newsweek, Harper's Bazaar, Details, Salon, Slate, The Daily Beast, Radar Online, The San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire.com, Movieline.com, Variety, Wired News, The LA Weekly, the UK's Arena, France's Max, The New York Post, The Vancouver Sun, Playboy.com, and many others. As a pundit, I was a regular on "Politically Incorrect." I've appeared on CNN, Fox News, and NPR.

"If You Don't Know Susannah Breslin, You Should"

At 6'1", Susannah Breslin is a force to be reckoned with. And, like anyone worth listening to, she calls it like she sees it. With the majority of her written work focused on adult topics [e.g. pornography, politics, and packin' heat] she garners little sympathy from the ultra-feminist and ultra-conservative crowds. But you don't have to agree with her. You just have to be open to the possibilities. After all, sometimes it takes a whistle blower -- no matter how tawdry or taboo the subject -- to gets ears bleeding. And that, my friends, takes balls of steel.

2. Online Editor. For the past 2.5 years (until today), I was an Associate Editor for Time Warner/Turner's The Frisky. I generated multiple blog posts daily for the site (nearly 1,500 to date) and led the online outreach program, helping grow the site from 100,000 unique visitors a month to over 4 million unique visitors and 20+ million page views a month. I also worked with freelance contributors, filled in as lead editor, copy edited, and assisted the marketing department in developing partnerships. I am familiar with multiple content management systems, Photoshop, and basic HTML. I am smart, savvy, and driven. With fifteen years of online editing and writing experience and eight years of blogging experience, I get what works online.

3. Professional Blogger. I've been blogging since 2002, when I created the popular Reverse Cowgirl blog, one of Salon's most-read blogs. In "Julie & Julia," when Julie says, "My blog is the third most popular blog [on Salon]," my blog was one of the top two. In 2008, Time.com declared me one of the year's best bloggers. I've guest blogged twice for the internationally-acclaimed and award-winning Boing Boing. I created one of True/Slant's most popular blogs, Off the Record. Even the Old Spice guy reads my blog posts. I am outspoken, entertaining, and hilarious.

4. Social Marketing Strategist. If you're looking for someone who knows how to use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to increase reader engagement, site traffic, and/or brand awareness, I'm your girl. I social network like Michael Jordan shoots hoops. If you are interested in discussing topics like "online verticals," "social marketing," and "core destinations," I know of what you speak. I will amaze you with my ability to influence the influencers, strategically execute strategies, and communicate interpersonally. I am responsible, hard-working, and live online.

5. Wait, There's More. I hold a BA in English from the University of California at Berkeley and an MA in Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. I'm a published photographer. I've produced TV segments. I am a jack of all trades and a master of several. Snap me up before someone else does.

Please feel free to link to, retweet, or otherwise distribute this post.

Or, you know, just HIRE ME.

[Photo by Clayton Cubitt]

God likes girls

A reader created this reworking of a photo I took.

Click HERE to see it bigger and better.

Thank you, reader!

I get email

Hi Susanna

I just finished reading "They Shoot Porn Stars Don't They?" and I really enjoyed it.  It's a great piece.  

I thought you would want to know that I picked up a mistake on page 8.  The sentence "Since business fell off, there are less opportunities for women to get work in the adult movie industry." should read "Since business fell off, there are fewer opportunities for women to get work in the adult movie industry."  My girlfriend has made me hyper sensitive to grammar and count nouns.

Anyway, all the best with your future work.

[Redacted]

How to be a man

My latest STUPID ADVICE column for Playboy's The Smoking Jacket is online: "How to Be a Renaissance Man."

If you’re going to be a well-rounded guy, Lankow says, “the attainment of knowledge is central to a man’s development.” To do this, he says, a man must read books daily, watch intellectually challenging TV programs, buy a globe and stare at it, and listen to NPR. Stupid Advice threw up a little in her mouth just writing that.

[Read it]

I am the trend de la creme

The very lovely Jill of Trend de la Creme wrote a very sweet post about me: "If You Don't Know Susannah Breslin, You Should."

At 6'1", Susannah Breslin is a force to be reckoned with. And, like anyone worth listening to, she calls it like she sees it. With the majority of her written work focused on adult topics [e.g. pornography, politics, and packin' heat] she garners little sympathy from the ultra-feminist and ultra-conservative crowds. But you don't have to agree with her. You just have to be open to the possibilities. After all, sometimes it takes a whistle blower -- no matter how tawdry or taboo the subject -- to gets ears bleeding. And that, my friends, takes balls of steel.

[Read it]

Thanks, Jill!

Man on toilet

I interviewed Sam Pilling and filmmaking collective SHELLBOOKNATIONAL about the unofficial video they made for David Lynch's "I Know" track.

As a simple narrative breakdown, we wanted to portray the demise of a man whose feelings of lust, desire and obsession controls and engulfs him. As a viewer, we are not sure whether all the women he sees are in fact real or part of some warped inner reality. The man is on the toilet as a metaphor for this lust: something he wants constantly regardless of where he is, and what he is doing. The toilet also suggests his vulnerability in this situation, the breaking of his control, and a turning point in the narrative where we discover that his desires are actually controlling him. The fact that he cannot leave the toilet to reach the woman represents his frustration.

[Read it]

I get email

Hello. I don't normally write people to show my appreciation but I read some of your work online and was beyond entertained and impressed by both your writing style and the subject matter. Your piece on trigger warnings was great, I know it was only a small story but I find it fascinating when such a story can have the obvious effect it seemed to get when at the same time it is sort of pointing out the obvious that either know one wanted to say or know one had been able to successfully voice in the past.

In any case I enjoyed it and for some reason felt that it would be nice to communicate that to you. If you have a list of people to inform once your novel is ready please add me to it as the short description I read it sounds like a compelling crime novel.

Hope you have a great new year and see more success at your writing.

Regards,

[Redacted]

[Image]

How to manscape

My latest STUPID ADVICE column for Playboy's The Smoking Jacket is online: "The Art of Manscaping."

Speaking for women, or at least this woman, we don’t understand why you would want to place a sharp object near your penis. This just seems unwise. For a wide variety of reasons. We love you, but if you accidentally hack off your phallus with a razor, we may have to seek out romantic relations elsewhere. That is how we roll.

[Read it]

Self-portrait with ribs

Ever since I got this email, I can't stop thinking about it. I mean, I have thought of other things, but my brain keeps going back to it, worrying it like a bone.

I'm not sure what the guy meant in his email, but I took it to mean: "You're boring." Or something to that effect. But that's not really what he said, or meant. But sometimes it feels like that. Basically, he was saying my blogs were one way when I was writing about porn and sex, and another way when I started doing what has come after, and I have no idea what that is. What comes after.

So, in a way, I am bored. Bored out of my mind. When I have tried explaining the situation to other people, I have said stuff like, "It's like being a crack addict, and then not, and it's like, what, this is supposed to be fun, not being high on crack?" Only writing about porn was my little white rock. And the problem with little white rocks is that they aren't good for you. So you have to find something else. It's like I'm sober. And, man, is sober fucking boring.

But I did know that the only reason his email was sticking in my head was because he was right. I felt bored with blogging, and I feel bored with a lot of other shit, too, and I need to feel unbored. Because boredom is a choice. It is not a terminal illness. And I want this year, this life, this existence to be different.

So, thanks, guy who wrote email.

I am trying to do things that don't bore me. Things that are not the same, that are different, that are better. I get a lot of motivation from Penelope Trunk, who blogs like an assassin takes out people. Here: She smashed a lamp over her head.

OK, I've smashed my head into a cabinet, but, you know what? I didn't blog about it.

Oh, wait. Maybe I did.

It's like that stupid thing written on a wall near where I live. Do something every day that scares you. I'll do that.

A review of my short story collection: You're a Bad Man, Aren't You?

YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? by Susannah Breslin -- I first discovered writer Susannah Breslin through a post Warren Ellis made years ago, when she ran her THE REVERSE COWGIRL blog, and I've been a fan since. This year I sound this small collection of her short fiction and it cemented why I became a fan of hers: her language. YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? is the various ways in which men are, well, bad. Whether it is the mand who ushers a midget into porn superstardom, the man who really just hates everyone and everything (the title story), the man who wonders about eating a woman, or the man prone to fornophilia. Breslin's words cut right to it, no time for niceties, and it is evident not just in her journalism nor blog writing, it's more than clear here. And that's what draws me the most to her writing, to her bits of fiction in YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? she doesn't fuck around, plain and simple. Reminds me of my initial reads of Chuck Palahniuk. And, all through this, because of her stories, I don't get the idea that Breslin doesn't like men, quite the opposite: I think she loves them, but is not naive to the social failures most of us are. If you're a man, or know a man, read this book and it'll show you maybe ought to know less men.

-- Javier Chavez Loeza

New Year's resolution

I was talking to my shrink today. I've been pretty stressed lately. Mostly, I was OK, until, like, late last week, and then not so much. I'm worried about some work stuff, and wonder why I got tired of doing freelance work for what amounted to, like, 50 cents, and feel like I should be out there doing something, like taking photographs or whatever, just anything, mostly at this point, and some days working on my novel feels like smashing my head into a brick wall, only the wall is virtual and the bricks are the alphabet, and there's other stuff, like, stuff I won't go into here. Usually, I've got a handle on it. Lately, no.

In any case, we talked for a while, and nothing was really helping, mostly because I thought everything he was saying was stupid or something I'd heard already. Obviously, this has no bearing on his ... talents as a shrink. He is really full of himself, so I don't have to worry about hurting his feelings or anything. But I spend so much time overanalyzing myself that therapy can seem redundant.

Eventually, he started rambling on about this really difficult time he went through in his life, and in the process of making some other point, he said something like, "It is physiologically impossible to be anxious and exhausted at the same time." He had exercised himself into being unable to be a spaz anymore. I was like, Hm.

For the past few months, I've been taking these long walks. A couple miles. Seeing as I'm someone who given a choice between "not move" and "move," I will chose "not move" every time, this was a lot of walking for me. So, he was like, "Well, walk further!" Or farther. Whatever.

And I did. Today I doubled my mileage. So, like, 4.4 miles according to my iPhone, although it was probably longer than that, since I was meandering all over the place, and I'm just using the map function. It was cold, crisp, and I had to put my hood on near the end, and half the time I had to pee, but it was good. Now, my legs are tired. But I'm also too tired to worry anymore.

My New Year's resolution is: Think less. I am working on that.