What could this mean? You’ll find out soon!
Author / Lexine
The Vegas Trip, Pt. 3: The 40th
I turned 10, 18, and 20 at home in the city I was born in. I celebrated my 21st at some waterfront restaurant in SF with my first-ever drink, my 25th in Santa Cruz, and my 30th in LA, trolling Dodger fans after another SF Giants World Series victory the day before. I had plans for my 40th since 2022, but none of them didn’t involve Vegas. I thought I’d go to Hawaii, or Europe on one of those seven-day European tour specials I’d see on Travelzoo. Some plans don’t come to fruition due to life’s curveballs hitting my head, however. (I felt like I’ve taken a lot of those curveballs to my head this year.) And then there are the rare times in life when I hit a grand slam. Finding a great place in Vegas at an amazing weekly rate on my exact travel dates was one of them.
I usually stay home on my born days, simply to avoid my special day being potentially ruined by assholes being assholes. But I also have this thing where I need to get a massage wherever I travel. In-home massage is costly as hell, so I found a good deal via Groupon at a massage clinic in Summerlin. The soonest opening they had on their schedule was, yep, on my birthday, so I ended up going out. The drive wasn’t bad, I didn’t encounter any assholes, and the massage was amazing.
I stayed home the rest of the time, though I took some time to explore the rest of the hotel.
My suite is up there. No, UP there!
It looks like Vegas paradise, but trust me, it was coooooold that day.
I had the option to go to LA again for my 40th, but there was that pesky blue baseball team and its fans. Naturally, there just had to be a World Series game on my born day, and a closeout game, too. Ten years ago, I sported my Giants hat while roaming the streets of LA, proud to be repping the winners. (Not once did I get jumped, if you can believe that.) I guess the evil gods of that blue baseball team must’ve remembered that because ten years later, guess who would win the World Series, and on my 40th, too? (And thus begins my revenge story!)
I eased my nerves in my private, jacuzzi-style bathtub, and it was a huge bathtub. With actual jacuzzi jets! The lights were mine, by the way.
The Vegas Trip, Pt. 2: The Adventure
The behemoth sight of The Sphere, taken from my ride on The High Roller.
After my last visit to Vegas back in 2018, I thought the city had everything and the kitchen sink. Sprawling buffets, 24-hour weed dispensaries, replicas of the Eiffel Tower and Brooklyn Bridge, fountain shows at the Bellagio, light shows at Fremont Street, and “Elvis” posing with families on the Strip sidewalks while trucks advertising near-nude escorts drive past. I guess I underestimated Vegas and its penchant for excess for they added more things since my last visit, namely The High Roller and The Sphere. Sooooo many more things to see, and yet…
…with a view like this from my room, it was kind of tough getting out. (That’s how much of a slut I am for pretty views from my home.)
By the way, after seeing more Trump ads on those digital billboards and on every other street corner, I think the next time I visit Vegas, it will be on a non-Presidental election year. It’s bad enough the convicted felon’s hotel is there, although it was also easy to miss since other buildings caught my eye. (In fairness, there were more Kamala ads around, including one on that big-ass Sphere.)
This was taken from observation deck at The Strat (more on this later), and I found out earlier that day that her ads would be featured on that Sphere. So glorious! 🥹
Not so glorious but amusing is seeing a gold-plated eyesore pull up to the Dollar Tree, of all places. Only in Vegas. I’d say people who voluntarily buy those abominations on wheels (after all the batshit crazy things its creator has said and done) have Dollar Tree morals, but that would be insulting to Dollar Tree.
The Vegas Trip, Pt. 1: The Arrival
A month ago, I was in Las Vegas, a few days fresh into my forties. Life seemed to be good; I was having fun and feeling some actual hope for the future. I wish I could say the same thing today, but that’s a rant for another day.
I didn’t plan nor expect to enter my forties in Vegas. With the budget I had at the time, I thought I’d take another LA trip (and risk my well-being being potentially rattled due to that blue team being in the World Series) or just celebrate my birthday close to home (I thought about staying at an upscale hotel in SF for a couple nights). Four days before my birthday, with still no place to go, I checked out Airbnb on a whim and saw an offering I couldn’t refuse: a high-rise suite at Palms Place with strip-facing views, going for under $700 for a week’s stay during my exact travel dates. The lone catch was that the reservation was “non-refundable” and, to save all my coins, I’d have to drive what would end up being over 1200 miles for a round trip. And I had only two days to prepare for my trip. They were small prices to pay to enjoy myself, however.
Thankful?!
I guess the things/people I can be thankful for this year are…
–Kylie Minogue, for existing and Tension II
–Megan Thee Stallion, for existing and the run she’s had this year
–Christina Aguilera, for existing and showing the world that she still has it
–getting the chance to see all three perform live this year
–owning the entire Married With Children series on DVD as I’ve been binge-watching the show yet again and that I don’t have to stream it (their crass yet self-deprecating humor soothes me)
–being super-duper fully vaccinated (got all my Covid shots and boosters and they do work because I’m still here and feeling fine after catching Covid for the first time this past summer)
–And not living with guilt when it came to this year’s elections. I voted Biden in the Primaries, voted early for Kamala, and not once did I tell others that “both sides are bAd” or to “not vote” this year, nor admitted that it was “my first time voting” while being in my late 30s because I’d been voting since I turned 18! (Some things weren’t meant to admit to the world, no matter how many internet Likes you’d get.)
Stuck In My Bad Girl Era
I’ll never be a good girl and I’m fine with that.
There’s something about the term “good girl” that never sat right with me. It’s what old male geezers say to young women in the workplace when the woman does something good at her job. It’s so 1950s, when Stepford wives and Doris Day-esque nice girls defined femininity while men got to be rebels without a cause with their leather jackets and cigarettes. It’s smack of submissiveness to the patriarchy and reeks of gender stereotypes; boys get to be “bad” and be rulers, fighters, and bed-hoppers, while girls can only be “good” and be rescued by the man for the sake of love and happiness. It’s something I wouldn’t say to my female pet if I had one. And it’s definitely why you’ll never catch me going near that Good Girl perfume. (I’m that petty to where I don’t even touch their sample vials in my Sephora perfume sets.)
It was not Marilyn Monroe or Eleanor Roosevelt, but a University of New Hampshire student named Laurel Thatcher Ulrich who, in 1976, said “well-behaved women seldom make history…” And in the early 1980s, then-Cosmopolitan Editor-In-Chief Helen Gurley Brown was attributed with that quote in the header pic (though she actually never said those words). Over four decades later after those quotes were made and I still see some women who’d rather “go to heaven” and be “well-behaved”. They’re now the Trad Wives, the ones who smile to look pretty for the guys, and the ones who vote like their man even if their vote takes away their rights. To be a “good girl” these days, in a landscape that witnessed a male convicted felon/rapist/all-around POS steal take the highest office in the country (again) and her abortion rights gutted, is to blindly dance in a field of landmines. Meanwhile, the “bad boys” have morphed into Douche Bro Incels, with control over women being their modus operandi. They’re no longer the good-looking rebel smelling nice and charming the skirts off the nice girls; they’re now the ugly try-hard looking older than his age who reeks of Sauvage and wants to rape the skirts off the nice girls. Why should women still play nice with the “your body my choice” assholes? And even when women do good, there’s always going to be a guy or ten thinking she’s “bad” because she supported Kamala and pro-abortion rights.
And it’s why I have no problem being a Bad Girl. If being strong, assertive, and doing things your way makes me “bad” to some “men,” so be it. Guess you can say I’ve been in my Bad Girl era for a while now. I haven’t nor will I do actual bad things like rob or murder anyone or support Nazis. But I’ll go against stupid patriarchal values, vote to support women’s rights, and enjoy consensual sex for fun when I want to. I’ll never smile to look pretty for the guys and I’m definitely not a man’s incubator. I don’t need men for love, sex, and money as I’m also attracted to other genders and I make good money on my own. I don’t want to get married and not only am I childfree, but childfree AND sterilized. Some vile conservatives took my reproductive rights away, and my Bisalp from last year is my lick back. (I also don’t want kids in this life, so suck on that, Elon!) So call me a Bad Girl. Besides, it’s more fun to go everywhere instead of just heaven.
And to the White Broligarchy that wants us women to play nice and make babies for them, this Bad Girl dedicates these songs to you!
(Yes, I’m aware I posted the last song in my last entry. Works for this entry, too!)
Thursday Random Thoughts
Like many real ones with social media these days, I have joined the land of blue skies. I haven’t abandoned the right-wing cesspool known as Twitter just yet, although I may consider it if I get more followers on Bluesky than Twitter. The Bluesky app also needs some work, but I must say: it’s soooooo refreshing to see a social media site not bogged down by its MAGA manchild owner, vile right-wing trash, algorithms that are obviously drunk, and dumb bots. Here’s hoping the site stays the course and doesn’t devolve like Twitter.
I’m also on Threads and still have my IG. I got a TikTok but I haven’t touched it for a year now. (I’m just not a TikTok girl.) In the hierarchy of SM posting, Bluesky now gets first dibs on my short-form nonsense, then Threads, and, if I feel like it, Twitter.
My Vegas birthday trip pics will be coming shortly. I’ve posted some on my socials a few weeks ago, but I got a lot more pics and a whole lot to say about them!
I travel for my day job a few times a week, and some of the things I’ve been seeing on the digital billboards when I take 880 North back home…😒”Be Kind”? “Choose Love”?? What in the sappy Etsy boymom hell is that? Many people in this country certainly weren’t kind at all at the polls two weeks ago!
By the way, IT’S STILL THE MOOD
Meanwhile, that parallel universe is looking more lovely by the day. We’re all looking forward to what the Kamala administration will bring to this country after her landslide election win two weeks ago, the House and Senate going blue, Trump and Elon finally going to jail, the racists/misogynists/Nazis all staying pissed on their Truth Social accounts, and next summer bringing us the release of Xtina’s newest album and the Batgirl movie. *sighs*
I think I found THE cold-weather fragrance…
…and THE scent for femme fatales, divas, and the bad girls your mother warned you about. In other words, MY kinds of scent! It’s a few steps above Black Orchid, which I also own, and that’s all I can say because I’m not well-versed in describing fragrances and its notes (and that’s something coming from a novelist-by-night).
Someone send me back to Vegas for the next seven months with a $15,000/month stipend to cover lodging, food, gas, bills, my rent back home, and miscellaneous. I only say this because the Penguins aka my hockey team won all their games while I was in Vegas. Superstitions and all that.
I’m really gonna miss Rafa. It was only a matter of time before he hung up his racket for good. The first time I saw him play was Wimbledon 2008; I tuned in after getting curious over the whole Nadal-Federer rivalry going on then. That Men’s Finals match, honey…talk about an intro! I enjoyed watching him play ever since, and he was the total package: talented, class act, and, yup, a hottie. 😘Him and Federer defined one hell of an era in Men’s Tennis that I doubt can be topped any time soon. Happy trails, Rafa! 🫶
I know Dolce & Gabbana are sketch (as people; their clothes are fine), but their Fall 2024 ads with Miley are STUN.
The pearl-clutchers need to take all their outrage they’re wasting over how suggestive Sabrina Carpenter is in her shows and instead apply it to why Fist Brown (thanks, Dlisted) still has a career. Go after the abusers in the industry, why don’t you. Or is that too difficult for them?
Ending this post with a song that will go multi-platinum in the households of young women fighting against the emboldened, yucky incels. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll know!
#TDOR
🏳️⚧️🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵
Comfort Food
It’s comfort food from here on out! And any cookie that takes up almost all of a tea plate is my kind of cookie!
I got this (and other sweets) from Starburst Parlor, a local bakery in Vegas that makes all keto/low-carb goodies! 😋 How the Bay Area doesn’t have a keto bakery is beyond me.
PS: yes I’m still mad from last week
Quote Of The Moment (11.11.24)
FACTS 👏 👏 👏 👏
Lex Writes On 