Noun/verb/magazine

Recently, I was called a son of a bitch in internet-public (a listserv of 300 people). I am both vaguely flattered and amused by this. As an epithet, SOB is noteworthy but less than fearsome--like a sticky, Ritalin'd five-year-old pulling at yr sleeve to watch him go down the slide. SOB is kind of comical. SOB is half the dialogue of a bad Al Pacino movie or Mandy Patinkin in The Princess Bride just before he kills the six-fingered man.

I am not backing down, I am not capitulating. I stand by what I originally wrote, and the style in which I wrote it. I also stand by the fact that I called myself a bitch, even though, like SOB, much of the impact that word once had has been drained or ceded to other words (thank you, Meredith Brooks). If a bitch is someone who speaks her mind in public fiercely, critically and unapologetically, then that is what I am. I wrote the clarification post sans vitriol to try and make it just that--clarified. Make no mistake, I love my Frosted Bitch Flakes. I eat them every morning.