Paradise Re-found

Since my teaching job in Monroe ended, I've realized that I've got a lot more free time.  I am working only a few hours each evening at Sylvan Learning Center so my mornings have been pretty open.  

I've gotten addicted to The View.  I love and hate this show so much - mainly because of Rosie.  She's loud-mouthed and bitchy and I love every minute of it.  Most people hate the show now because she's on there speaking her mind and won't shut up.  But I applaud her.  :-)  She does end up getting on my nerves sometimes but I do enjoy listening to her view points on things.  

I've also decided that I'm going to be reading a LOT more since the last books I read were When Sex Becomes Work and A Diary of a Young Girl last October.  Yesterday, I started reading Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs.  I finally got a chance to see that movie that other day.  I loved it so much that I just had to read the book and it's more bizarre than the movie.  I'm halfway done with the book and that was one fucked up childhood that he had.  I'm sure his other books are crazy as well.  I'll get to those eventually but next on my list is Religious Literacy by Stephen Prothero.  The author was featured on The Daily Show and it seemed interesting.  Then I'll be moving onto Chelsea Handler's My Horizontal Life.  Yes they are two extremely different books but I figured I needed to get at least some religion in me before I read about being a slut.  After that I've been debating on whether or not to read The Secret.  I'm not quite sure on that one though.

Oh yeah and I gues I should also start looking for some sort of full time teaching job and figure out what to do about grad school. 

Now as a tour guide, I have to do all the research possible so that I can inform my tourists on anything they ask me.  This week I will start giving tours for our company in the famous Red Light District here.  I've been doing a lot of walking around and finding out as much as I can.  When veetor was here, he helped me do a LOT of this research (porn shops, live sex shows, etc).

For this tour, I just finished reading the most fascinating book in the world.  It's called When Sex Becomes Work or as we like to call it "The Prostitute's Handbook."  It was written by Mariska Majoor who was the founder of Amsterdam's Prostitution Information Center (PIC) and she is even an ex-prostitute herself (or as veetor says "She was a prostitute that got promoted into a management position").

I would highly recommend this book to everyone regardless of their views on prostitution.  Walking around the area, I thought that I had a good understanding of these ladies, but this book gives you a really interesting perspective.  It's a tell-all book that discusses things that you would never even think that a prostitute would need to worry about.  Some of the topics are:

    - How much water and what types of foods to consume while on duty
    - How to pay taxes
    - How to say no to a customer that has a penis larger than you are comfortable with
    - How to actually save up some of the money that you are making
    - What to tell your friends and family or how lead a double life and keep it a secret
    - What to do if someone you know sees you working in one of the windows
    - The pro's and con's of each type of prostitution (i.e. escort, brothels, windows, private houses...)

But if you ever get a chance, definitely read it.  Think of the most god-awful borest book you've ever tried to read and this is the exact opposite of that.