Family Matters:

- So it turns out not everyone appreciated my hardcore porn post from the other week, including my mother. I gots a-talking-to, you guys. HARDCORE. Diane was offended on the following levels:

1.) They were crass photos

2.) It was beneath the blog; we're better than that

3.) As she shrieked at me on a very crowded Connecticut Avenue last Thursday night, "I just keep imagining some random person BEATING OFF to your blog, Meghan!"

4.) I used Evie's head to censor the genitals

In my defense:

1.) Well, yes, they were crass, but more importantly, they were hilarious. I wasn't just posting random pornographic images for funzies. That's what my private tumblr blog, www.megsfucknasTpix.tumblr.com, is for. Obvs.

2.) I genuinely appreciate that my mom holds the blog in such high regard, but at the same time, this isn't exactly Faulkner. I primarily write about bodily functions and laziness and my main literary technique is the Zack Morris time-out. And !!!1. I feel like the odd porn excerpt here and there isn't that unexpected.

3.) Look, I'm not here to control what people do or do not beat off to on the Internet. And frankly, if you can successfully whack it to a picture of a porn star three hep's to the wind with giant Evie heads covering the interesting bits—hats off to you.

4.) Point taken. So to make it right, here's a picture of Evie with floating Jenna Jameson heads of censorship:

Aaaaaand all is right with the world again.

- Speaking of my mom, guess who's our new advice columnist? My mom! CRAZY, RIGHT? Amy did an awesome job at Queer Abby and truthfully, there's no reason we stopped doing it. The last round of questions she sent me, I was like "Oh, I'll just save this for a rainy day on the blog," proceeded to straight-up forget about it, and by the time I realized we hadn't done a QA post in a while, a really awkward amount of time had gone by and I assumed she thought I was a giant asshole, so I just kind of slinked off to a dark corner. Which is exactly what I was telling some readers at the YMTE podcast event when it was suggested that my mom do an advice column, à la this edition of QA. And I thought it was genius! Anyone who knows Diane knows that that woman gives some damn good advice. But like, really good advice. It's kind of just that easy. We don't really a shtick. So, my mom is the new advice columnist! And here's a quick word from her to you:

hello. my name is diane and i am meg's mother. no, this is not the start of some strange 2b1b twelve step program. since meg and i will be writing the advice column together for a while, i thought i would introduce myself to you. i was a bit surprised when meg invited me to join her, but i was also very flattered, so here i am. i figure there might be a few things you should know about me before trusting me with some details of your life.

the first fact you have no doubt figured out by now. i am considerably older than you are. my language is different, my music is different, my cultural references are different. when i was in my twenties, we were at war with viet nam. we had no cell phones, no home computers. when we found ourselves near a man with two pierced ears who was seemingly talking to himself, we were strongly urged to cross the street. for many of those years i could be found, along with my long brown hair, t shirt, hip hugger bell bottoms and genuine indian moccasins, at my little art school in connecticut. not much in common.....well, there is that sex and drugs thing. that should count for something. [Editor's Note: Crass.]

i do have some qualifications.
1. i have been a mother for 30 years, and even though they don't always take it, my girls say i give good advice.
2. ever since i was a kid, i've been told i was a "good listener." now you may assume that in high school i was the slightly over-weight girl of average looks with lots of prettier more popular girl friends and lots of boy friends eager to hook up with said girl friends...and you may be right,
3. i was just told last year by a psychic i met in england that i am what is known in her world as a "helper." she also told me i was a good listener. assume what you will.

unless meg has corrected this entry before posting it ['Eh, I started to but gave up half an hour later when I was only on the third sentence and needed my life back], you will have noticed that i do not capitalize anything. this is not an affectation on my part, or an homage to e.e. cummings. i simply find the thought of depressing two keys at once that often exhausting. please, just go with it. which brings me to my next point....please don't bother correcting my spelling, grammar, ect. do not point out any misused words or phrases. i figure there must be some stuff i never learned, and i know there is a lot of stuff i have forgotten. chalk it up to a quirky literary style (that diane, so creative with her over used comas and annoying dot, dot, dots). thank you in advance.

well, i guess that's it. if you feel that meg and i can help you in any way, just e mail meg. [Don't do that. I lose enough emails and piss off enough people as it is. Email AskYoMama@2birds1blog.com and I'll teach you how to check it, mom. And no, it won't change the settings on your computer. I can hear you sighing from here. I swear to God, it's easy to check and I'll write down the instructions and leave them with you. This feels like something we should have talked about before this went up, and yet...here we are.] we will treat your request with respect and gravity. at least i will, i'm never sure about meg. [And you never will be, madam.]

so, until next time, i send you my warm regards and...peace.
(i know, i know, but thinking about the 60's and the 70's just brought it all back, man.)

AskYoMama@2birds1blog.com!

- My brother-in-law recently confided in me that every time he flies, he gets a spontaneous erection during the plane’s descent in a medical anomaly he calls “Landing Boner”. I thought this was fascinating, to say the least, and he in turn appreciated that I was the only person he’d told this to who didn’t automatically disregard it as “weird” or “creepy”. Apparently he’s yet to find another guy who experiences Landing Boner and the preliminary research he did of Googling “Why do I get an erection during landing?” didn’t yield anything helpful. Me? I just heard “BONER MYSTERY” and told him that now he was talkin' my language. (And you’re welcome, sir. Every now and then it helps to have someone like me in your familial corner.)

Apparently what makes Landing Boner so horrific is that it hits exactly when the flight attendents start going up and down the aisles to look at your groin and make sure your seat belt is fastened. Now of course when he told me that, I laughed and laughed, and laughed and laughed for a long, long time, but I also decided then and there that I would be the one to get to the bottom of this so-called Landing Boner mystery. And, embarrassingly enough, that’s why there was no post yesterday. Because I spent my entire Sunday night writing time researching air pressure, commercial flying altitudes, and the male erection. My inclination is to apologize, but you know what? Family first.

The good news is, I think I’ve successfully solved the mystery of the Landing Boner. (Or as I was a hot second away from texting to my sister today, “I think I’ve cracked your husband’s boner code!” Christ.)

The reason Landing Boner initially made so much sense to me was because air pressure fluxuates during a flight. If it’s enough to make me puffy and thirsty, it’s got to be enough to wreak havoc on the wang, right? The flaw in this logic, however, is that air pressure increases as altitude decreases, so during landing, you’d think it would actually be harder to get a boner (wakka, wakka, no pun intended). But that wasn’t enough to stop me. No, it only drew me in further.

After an embarrassingly long amount of time doing research, here’s my final summation: while not being a medical doctor or physicist, I’m 99.9% sure that Lading Boner does make physiological sense. What I failed to take into account before is how air pressure works inside the aircraft. Commercial airplanes pump pressurized air into the cabin during a flight to avoid its passengers from getting Hypoxia, Altitude Sickness, or Barotrauma. During descent, however, the air is slowly depressurized before being turned off all together at around 10,000 feet. Now according to my research, although the pressure is constantly adjusting itself to match that of around 8,000 feet, it’s a.) not perfect, and b.) noticeable during take off and landing.

So during landing, although the atmospheric pressure may be increasing, air pressure inside the cabin is actually decreasing. And if the air pressure in the cabin is decreasing, the blood begins to flow faster, which added to the gentle vibration of the engine and that flight attendant with an ass that just won’t quit—BOOM! Mega-huge boner.

Truthfully the blood pressure part of my theory is a little shoddy because I don’t understand what blood pressure is and how it works and frankly never will. I know it has something to do with the walls of your blood vessells and two different measurements and listening for something and Tippecanoe and Tyler too and I just never know how to react when they take my blood pressure at the doctor’s and tell it to me. You could tell me my blood pressure is 5,000/32 virgins and I’d still think I was in the best shape of my life.

So yes, Landing Boner—as the pressure inside the cabin drops, your blood vessels expand, allowing blood to start-a-free-flowin’ and suddenly you’re DTF, right? I assume if I’m wrong, you won’t hesitate to tell me, so either way, we’ll get to the bottom of this, Brah. Oh, and I’m not a total asshole, by the way. Geoff was more than fine with me writing about this because he's desperate to find some brothers in the fight that is Landing Boner. So if it happens to you, you are not alone!

...Also, I'd also just like it to be known that if I could travel around the country in a van with a pug just eating sandwiches and solving boner-related mysteries, I would never be sad again. So. There's that.