If you don't already follow the funny/sad/personal Sex Worker Problems blog, I will agan remind you to do so.  There was a post with a question about how to explain gaps in your resume if you move out of sex work and apply for straight jobs, and I shared my two cents about one could tackle that problem.

I’m almost 28, and I’ve been a sex worker since I was 18.  I have no plans to leave sex work any time soon, but the “what would I tell potential employers” thing always seemed like a no-brainer to me, so long as one doesn’t mind lying.  Here are two completely plausible lies that a potential straight employer has no way of disproving...

Read the rest here.

Here's my seasonal public shout-out to the awesome people who bought me awesome gifts from my Amazon wishlist, including books written by two of my favorite Twitterfolk: @pennjillette and @evgenymorozov.  Thanks to JV, HD, MM, SB, and BJ!  (Please include your email in the "gift comments" field so I can send you a thank you email.)

My cool new books:

* The Art of War by Sun Tzu
* The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays by EP Thompson
* The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov
* God, No!: Signs You May Already Be An Atheist and Other Magical Tales by Penn Jillette
* Working Sex: Sex Workers Write About a Changing Industry edited by Annie Oakley
* The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future by Cynthia Eller

I turn 28 this month, so as always, I shamelessly encourage birthday/Festivus gifts from my wishlist on Amazon.  Click on the menu to sort by priority, as some items are higher on my list than others.  I'm currently salivating pretty heavily over the $85 Breaking Bad shoes, hint hint.

(PS: If you buy any of these books through my links, a portion of the price goes to SWAAY.)

Happy two year blogoversary to me!  It feels like it's been much longer.

As I did last year, here's a list of my most popular/controversial/commented-upon blog posts from the last year.  (I was going to make it top ten, but there was a tie, so it's eleven.)

* The feminist left versus Julian Assange: how a fanatical belief in every sex crime allegation hurts everyone [November 2010]
* My experience mocking TSA security theater at Seatac as a nearly-naked enfant terrible [November 2010]
* My call for a "working" class uprising against inaccessible discourse and the over-representation of dabblers [January 2011]
* I burn bridges, because baby - who needs a bridge when you can swim? [May 2010]
* The battle against paternalism: an ode to the oft-neglected option of tubal ligation [October 2010]
* Loving my enemy and ineffective activism: "ally" commentary surrounding the Stop Porn Culture conference [June 2010]
* How are we branding sex workers' rights in the US? (Let's focus more on *worker*, less on *sex*!) [April 2011]
* "The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal": a dystopian solution to insecurities [January 2011]
* Legalization versus decriminalization: why the healthcare analogy is misapplied [January 2011]
* Vigilantism and 'crushing bastards': in praise of anger, hatred, and taking joy in the smiting of one's enemies [November 2010]
* Sex worker representation: what is the role of public storytelling? [February 2011]

What's coming up as I enter my third year of blogging and having a more visible internet presence outside of just being naked?

I'm still procrastinating on completing a book proposal, though I have at least decided on the sample chapter to lead with: how feminism has done nothing but hurt the sex workers' rights movement.  I also put off launching my sex workers' rights web site by a month (moved from May 1 to June 1), but that will be online shortly at SWAAY.org.  (Fundraiser tee shirts and stickers were orders this week!  Yay!)

With both the book project and the activist/outreach project, I face the exact same challenge.  I could write well over a book worth of material with my thoughts on sexuality, sexual politics, and sex work.  I also have tons of ideas for amazing things I'd like to see happening in the sex workers' rights scene in the US.  It's not like I'm at a loss for ideas or directions in which I could go, or subjects I could write about, or projects I could start.  My biggest challenge, as I try to maintain a healthy balance between work, political interests, and my private/friend/sex/social life, is how to limit my scope and keep things on my plate manageable.  I don't want to run myself ragged trying to do it all, I'd like to inspire other people to pick ideas up and run with them.  Hopefully, with your help, I'll be able to do just that in the coming year.

Something happened at the end of 2010.  I finally became Andy Warhol.

"Don't pay any attention to what they write about you.  Just measure it in inches." -- Andy Warhol

Just kidding.  I don't think I'm that famous.  (And unlike him, not one feminist has actually tried to murder me yet.)

But, I've finally hit that point - sparked by a frothy mixture of more people talking about me, and more letting go of keeping up with haters - where I'm not even trying to read everything people say about me any more.  Google Alerts for my name and my blog are only glanced at, not read in their entirety, and certainly not used as motivation to jump into fights with people on the internet about whether or not I am an asshole.  (I already know I'm an asshole.  I just happen to be an asshole who's correct most of the time, like all the best villains of fiction.)

Haters are so funny.  I'll never get over the hilarity of how verbose and devoted people get when obsessively, repeatedly explaining to me how "boring" or "unimportant" they find me, and I've attracted heaps of those detractors-cum-fans in the last six weeks between two popularity spikes.  (Although, an all-time favorite insult was from two or three years ago, when a Republican pornographer launched her triumphant fuck-you at me on a forum.  She revealed that she found me so extremely boring that she even wrote a whole blog entry about how boring I am.  Yeah, uh... you sure showed me!)  It's like being in kingergarten and knowing who secretly likes you based on who bothers to throw dirt at you, except now, the dirtiest dirt to be thrown is accusations of having bored the hater.  Let the record reflect that I'm not the one who's hounding my political opposites, following them around the internet in the excited hopes that maybe they'll pay attention to me.  I stay in my own virtual house for the most part - something of an internet cat lady shut-in, I suppose.  I hardly even comment on my friends' blogs (sorry!), let alone spend my life seeking out blogs of strangers I can dislike so I can self-righteously lecture them about exactly why I dislike them.  What a bizarre and neurotic thing to do!

Those two popularity spikes I mentioned were my pantless TSA protest (almost half a million views on the video!) and my Assange rape skepticism post (mostly wigged out about by feminists).

No one whose opinion I care about has attacked me, but I did earn praise from three people I admire.  Penn Jillette called me a hero on Twitter for my TSA protest, Dan Savage quoted my thoughts on rape in a post titled "What She Said,", and Laura Agustín commented in support of my rape piece.  I'm going to cherry pick and say I got all the external validation I could want between those three.  And, of course, there was a torrent of people commenting all around the web about how I'm a monster who's basically responsible for everything bad that's ever happened to anyone.  It's pretty rad that I somehow manage to simultaneously be the most insignificant yawn-fest people have ever deigned to notice, and also powerful enough to be personally responsible for stuff like "rape culture" and terrorist airplane hijackings.  I'm an enigma like that.

A couple of months ago, I received an unsolicited email from a literary agent asking me if I had a book proposal she could check out.  Seeing as how getting my shit together and writing a sample chapter and proper proposal was already on my "things to do in the near-ish future" list, it was very flattering to have someone express interest without me even trying.  And, maybe it will go no where and no publisher will want to print anything I say - I'm not going to get over-excited.  (I have a major loathing of how commonly people brag about how they're "writing a book," like just saying it out loud means you're halfway to winning a Nobel Prize.  Ain't nothing special about writing a book, kids - you don't get any bragging rights until all those words are, you know, being purchased in stores in book format.)  Even with that cynicism in mind, I'm flattered by the interest.  I wonder, snidely, how often literary agents track down blog comment trolls to say things like, "Your scathing paragraph of how [so-and-so] is ugly and stupid was absolutely brilliant!  Please send me a book proposal and sample chapter as soon as you have one.  You have a unique voice!"

(Seriously - has anyone ever gotten a book deal based on their "work" as a commenter on blogs?  Has anyone ever parlayed posting comments on other people's web sites into anything substantive or memorable?)

If I get presents sometimes, am I allowed to think of my blog as a paid gig yet?  A poorly paid gig - like begging for spare change - but hey, it's awesome to get things in my mail drop.  Thank you to the people who sent my latest cool new things: G, N, T, and A.  One of them came without a receipt/note, so I'm sorry for the person I'm missing.  (Feel free to utilize the "leave a gift message" option so you can tell me your email and I can thank you individually.)  The cool things I received:

* A mini cupcake pan by Calphalon.

* An animal cookie cutter set which includes a snail, hedgehog, moose, fox, bear, and a squirrel.  Snail cookies!

* Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá.

* Lonely Planet Australia.  (I was originally planning to go to Australia for this winter's vacation, but I'm going to Sri Lanka instead.  I will go to Australia next year, though.  I need my All Seven Continents merit badge.)

* Opening Up by Tristan Taormino

* Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein.  (The sender bought me two of these without instructions on what to do with the second copy.  I gave the extra to a trans friend of mine.)

My 27th birthday is coming up next month, and as always, I love gifts!  I have a wishlist on Amazon that's handy-dandy for browsing things I want, and they ship those items directly to me.  It's so easy to use, you really have no excuse for not buying me stuff.  My top two at the moment are the first couple of books listed in chronological order of being added, which are about Sri Lanka.

I felt like doing a light-hearted blog.  And, that 5% of me that's girlie needed to start a Tumblr.

Go take a gander (and submit photos!) at StuffSexWorkersEat.tumblr.com

I'm a huge fan of food and sex workers, and I think this will make for a nice distraction that satisfies my interest in both, while working towards the political aim of humanizing us.

In the last month or so, I've done some none-too-subtle waving and pointing at my Amazon wishlist.  Hey, if I had any sense of shame, do you think I'd be where I am today?  I am a defective human being in that I seem to lack both the "fear of 'authority'" and "shame" centers of my brain, which seem to be the driving forces behind all-too-many people's decisions.

So, I wanted to give a public thanks to the several lovely people who sent me some cool books.  It's nice to feel appreciated for the energy I put into my writing and being a naked chick on the internet.  I've received:

* The History of Sexuality Volume One by Michel Foucault

* A Woman Speaks: The Lectures, Seminars and Interviews of Anais Nin

* Dada and Surrealism: A Very Short Introduction by David Hopkins

* The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia by Elizabeth A Wood.  (This came without contact info from the gifter, sorry I can't email you personally to say thanks!)

* Planet Ice: A Climate for Change by James Martin

* Rebel Lives: Albert Einstein edited by Jim Green. (This also came without contact info from the gifter.)

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