Steak Ass Bitches, Milking Titties and Bleak Ass Hos

This article details the ‘conversational repertoire’ that Tao Lin and I use in our emails and Gmail chats. The repertoire has been, up to this point, relatively private. To the extent described in this article, I think neither of us uses this language with anyone else, really. We seem highly comfortable communicating to each other, which I think has lead to an almost complete disregard for social norms and highly abstract, implied and rhetorical language. The result is communication that’s detached from itself, in that the entire interaction is implicitly brought into focus and laughed at or enjoyed. The other result is that we’ve begun to communicate in very, very weird ways.

“To milk” is a somewhat popular expression among American print and web journalists. Tao and I employ it in the same way they do, its concrete meaning being something like “to take advantage of someone’s or something’s resources,” only with us it seems funny and much more generalizable across a range of behaviors or situations.

We often employ “to milk” in combination with “titties.” Titties are an addendum, objects that have little concrete meaning. They provide additional imagery for us to riff off, i.e. “milk its sweet, supple ass titties.” They also add an obscene element to the conversation, which we both seem to enjoy.

“Titties” are gender neutral, and things that aren’t human can have titties. We might say, in the case that the other just bought a new book, “milk its titties.” In this case, milking the book’s titties would provide the milk, the milk being things like information, new knowledge, less boredom, happiness, less depression, etc. One can also milk “shit,” i.e. “milk that shit,” or just “him” or “her” or “it” or whatever, i.e. “going to milk your article idly later.”

Variations on “milk” itself are rare – it’s almost always employed as is, but there have been temporary upwellings of expressions such as “to put one’s milking gloves on” (a mental process in preparation for milking something/someone), “double [or triple/quadruple] milking action” and “raw human milk” (the resource to be gained from the human that is to be milked) (it seems, actually, that the term has been used as such here, indicating, with the expression “milked… dry,” that there was milk to be had from milking).

I understand this combination of words may be ‘very unseemly,’ ‘deplorable,’ ‘juvenile’ and probably really weird. I would probably be embarrassed if my girlfriend ‘caught me’ typing to Tao “he’s thrusting his titties forward to be milked, put your milking gloves on for milking action,” or something.

It’s just that our language exists in a sort of private vacuum with little outside influence (in the sense that it is only two people talking). Variations on words and themes get ‘compounded’ via literally hundreds of hours of chatting and thousands of emails (within a context of nonjudgment, freedom and the belief that honesty is ‘right,’ I think) to produce what a ‘newcomer’ might see as offensive and absurd and very weird.

An early, funny use of “to milk” occurred in The Brandon Book Crisis by Tao, who wrote something about milking his fans, referring to his fans as “bitches.” Of this, blogger DJ Berndt said that it was the “biggest mistake of his career.”

I think Tao and I’s definition of “seems bleak” is just the literal meaning of the phrase. I think it’s become a tradition for us because it seems funny and mood-lightening. There are many bleak things. We live in a bleak world. I consider the following song, called Centipede Soavi by Odd Nosdam, really bleak.

It seems like once one of us refers to something as seeming bleak, it suddenly causes the other to realize it does actually seem bleak.

Using “seems bleak” to describe a thing or situation mostly acts as a way to feel less bad about the topic of conversation and reframe it into something sarcastic and to be laughed at. It’s often, with “seems bleak,” and probably all the other phrases cataloged in this piece, that its use instantly ‘ups’ the humor level of the conversation and adds to its value, for us.

At the same time it seems to me that using “seems bleak” does actually indicate or recognize the depressing reality of the situation. But I feel it’s funny to see bleak things and say that they seem bleak. I think we both think bleak situations are very funny, in some capacity, and I think by using “seems bleak” we’re able to move closer toward mindsets that allow us to see bleak situations that we’re in the midst of as funny and less negatively affecting.

Feel like this is one of the only words we use that I haven’t necessarily given a lot of thought to, other than a conscious recognition that we often make a joke out of meat i.e. “steak ass,” “i vomited steak,” “eating a raw steak,” or something. Here’s what I think is a ‘very intense’ use of “organic steak” by Tao (also combines “milk [+] titties”):

I think that for some reason the concept of steak is simply funny to us. It seems like we see steak as highly obscene and almost offensive in some way. I think citing obscene and offensive things is one of our styles of humor. Steak and large quantities of meat also seem bleak.

When one of us mentions steak or beef I often have a mental image of a large brown piece of steak with a white background, sometimes a fork going into it quickly, and that maybe happening repeatedly. A lot of times I’ve thought things like “steak ass piece of meat” or “organic steak” or “steak ass titties” in response to steak entering the conversation. I think that every time steak enters the conversation I start grinning immediately.

Seems like it took us six months to a year to ‘get to’ the level we’re at now with “steak.” At this point we openly imply that large quantities of meat are funny and now use its associated language consciously as part of our ‘things we can riff off’ repertoire.

Seems like the frequent addition of “ass” to the end of adjectives and “bitch ass” before nouns was a relatively recent development. Probably started only six months ago, but I think maybe during the first or second instance of use we both recognized that it was good and that it would stay and become a part of the way we chatted with and wrote to each other.

I really like to use “ass” and “bitch ass” when chatting with Tao. I honestly gain enjoyment from using these terms. Adding “ass” to the end of adjectives or “bitch ass” before nouns can get pretty creative/unexpected.

It often happens in conversations, when “ass” is first introduced, we seem to get really hyped on it and end up ‘devolving’ into a stream of non sequiturs that use “ass” a lot.

It honestly feels like adding “ass” to the end of adjectives or “bitch ass” before nouns really has no concrete meaning, other than perhaps the signifier that the thing we’re talking about is somewhat oppressive or ‘intense’ to some degree. I think we also see their use as ‘unreasonably obscene,’ in that there’s really no reason to use them other than to be obscene, and this seems funny to us.

I think “ass” and “bitch ass” don’t have value connotations – perhaps the only thing they imply is that whatever we’re speaking of is something that we’re ‘up against.’ The fact that we’re ‘up against’ something mostly always seems neutral to us, like if I was playing a video game and was up against a boss, I wouldn’t feel that was a negative thing in regards to my life.

I think “ass” and “bitch ass” only serve to add comical layers of sarcasm and act to simply make our lives better and make us feel happier while chatting. It might be that “ass” and “bitch ass” are some of the least concretely meaningful terms in our conversational repertoire.

On a sidenote, Violent J of Insane Clown Posse used a very intense and funny variation on “ass” recently, which I found really good and often ‘return to’ in my mind. He said, defending one of his songs that was about liking nature, “Nature itself is a miracle. Stand toe to toe with the ocean at night and tell me that shit ain’t amazing…We appreciate all this shit. Especially a yellow ass, long neck giraffe. What’s a shame is how people walk around blind to it all. They lost their spirit about everything. If you can’t even see the miracle in animals, then you must have never truly loved a pet. That has to suck for you…”

Koko, the gorilla that’s able to communicate with American sign language, is also a relatively recent addition to the way Tao and I interact. We seemed obsessed with her around the months of July and August of this year. I think the catalyst for bringing Koko into our dialogue was an email from Tao that had a link to Koko’s “sexual harrassment” section of her Wikipedia page. It says

“Three former female employees have claimed that they were pressured into showing their breasts to Koko. They alleged that Patterson encouraged the behavior, often interpreted Koko’s signs as requests for nipple display, and let them know that their job would be in danger if they ‘did not indulge Koko’s nipple fetish.'”

I emailed Tao back a link to Koko’s website, and the following five to ten emails were mostly us sending links of pictures of Koko that were on the site and sometimes saying ‘lol’ and ‘jesus…’ and ‘bro….’ We soon started to Gmail chat about her.

I think we both view Koko as ‘obscene,’ ‘very unseemly,’ ‘very offensive,’ and as ‘actively trying to offend us.’ There’s also, I think, a ‘sub-narrative’ we have regarding Koko that we often cite and chat about. The sub-narrative is that Koko is ‘beating’ me, or threatens to eclipse me in terms of fame by gaining more followers on Twitter, being invited to influential parties in New York City, starting a blog, potentially getting TV advertisement deals, and potentially getting a book deal. In the narrative, I fear that Koko has a potentially viral personal brand, and I’m afraid of being ‘beaten’ by her.

It’s hard to describe how offensive we both seem to find Koko. It seems like we ‘hate’ her and are somewhat obsessed with her and at the same time have talked about wanting to invite her to our book release parties and take her around in New York City and be her friend. When we used to talk about her a lot we spent a good amount of time talking about her website and her caretakers and her facial expressions.

We talk less about Koko now, but when we do use her in conversations it’s to feel happier, I think. Her facial expressions and her demeanor seem obscene and I think we enjoy that.