Nudity is Only Skin-Deep

I am full of hope, which is vastly preferable to being full of shit. I found a job listing for a new dance studio looking for instructors. Please let me be paid to do what I love. It's one of the reasons I moved to Ontario in the first place.

Now that I'm full of nervous energy for having found a job listing that actually looks great, I am going to go to the gym and burn it all off at a cycling class.

I went to the gym yesterday and did my usual workout. It took me twice as long as it should have. I had to take long breaks between sets. I'm guessing this was caused by a combination of asthma and Smirnoff Ice-induced rot gut. I must remember to never drink that shit again. It does bad things to me, and doesn't even taste good. And I didn't even have a whole bottle of the stuff. Eugh!

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I'm slow on the uptake sometimes, but today I finally discovered blip.fm. If you'd like to hear my selections, please check out my channel.

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Link time? Ok.

Experiments in the Revival of Organisms (1940): It lives (thanks, Doyce).

The 5 Least Sexy Products Money Can Buy=One Terrifying Date: I am obviously not a romantic. I want the perfume and the reactive ink.

Emergency Bra: Unsnap, separate cups, inhale...: "The bra is, of course, meant to be taken off, something most adults presumably have experience with. Once removed, it separates into two masks which, when placed over the nose and mouth, filter out particles that were found to be as harmful as radiation in Chernobyl."

Smallest Man-Made Orange: I'm not a miniaturist, but this is pretty cool (thanks, Kitty).

The Man With a Tail: "Chandre Oram, from Alipurduar of West Bengal, India, has a 13 inch (32.5 cm) long and one inch (2.5 cm) thick tail." Surely, I am not the only person who thinks this man could have a future in porn.

Mont. woman fends off bear attack with zucchini: She didn't get so much as a scratch. I'm presuming the bear wasn't hurt, aside from his pride (thanks, Kathryn).

Octopus Listings on Etsy: Oh no! I can't stop looking!

I love this pillow.

Wow. My yesterday sure was a sack of shit. I slept horribly, and kept waking up over and over again, sure it was time to get up and go to the dentist. But no, 5 am is not dentist time. And neither is 5:10, 5:20, etc--especially when I went to bed at close to 2 am. So I finally got to the dentist and subjected myself to the usual pain and discomfort and got a temporary crown affixed to one of my many ruined teeth.

When the freezing wore off a few hours later, my mouth ached, and the aching did not subside. To top matters off, I got nasty stomach cramps in the evening after dance class. And then the crown started to come out.

Augh.

I was contacted by two of the places I'd applied for work:

1. A movie theatre, which only is interviewing on the weekend. When I told them I'm unavailable this weekend, and on weekends in general, they told me it was for a weekend job, so they'd keep my resume on file. Ugh. I'm sure it's a shitty job, anyway.
   
2. The walker job. Whoever it was who called me had no idea I'd already done a shift for them. I politely declined her offer of the job, and didn't bring up the multiple issues I'd had with their treatment of me and their other employees.

Last night was another night of bad sleep, as my stomach cramps woke me up a few times. I think they're gone, now. And I went back to the dentist and got the crown reattached. Here's hoping it stays, this time, at least until next Friday when I go for the gold....

I sure am sick of all this. I want to stop hurting, and I want someone to just hire me, already. I'm a skilled, conscientious, punctual worker with a strong work ethic. My past employers (aside from the unethical ones) have nothing but good things to say about me. Maybe I should just pretend to be dumb and lazy. Maybe then I'll land a job.

Link time.

How animals made us human: "The unique ability to observe and control the behavior of other animals is what allowed one particular set of Pleistocene era primates to evolve into modern man." Interesting....

You Don't Have to Be Pretty: "Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female'."

Bar-Barians – Ninja Masters of the Pull Up Bar!: I would love to have this level of fitness.

Use Old Wool Sweaters and Blankets to Make Felt: "You can make felt for projects out of old sweaters and other woolen objects with hardly any expense involved. The old name for this process was "boiled wool" or "fulling." In the years before artificial fibers many items that needed to be sturdy and warm were made of felted scraps."

World's Most Incredible Face Paintings: This guy does some really imaginative and creepy stuff.

Ugh. I think the stomach cramps are returning. My guess is this time, it isn't dietary, but stress-related. Grr....

I had a scary moment last night. I was biking home from my dance class when I saw someone was throwing out a bunch of stuff, including a toy shopping cart. I thought my nephew might like such a thing, so I spun back and got it. It was not heavy or particularly large, but it was awkward. I found a way to hold it in one hand and started biking home.

At one point, the breeze caught the toy and shifted it in my grip, and my knee got caught in the basket part, which caused me to suddenly veer out into the street without warning.

There were no cars, but my heart was pumping pretty hard and fast up in my throat for a moment, there.

So now, at great potential cost, Ralph has a free toy shopping cart, next time he comes to visit. He'd better like it! Ha!

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I'm searching for music to use for an upcoming Hallowe'en dance performance. I'm looking for something I could use for a piece about necromancy. So far, the most interesting pieces have been from the Last Temptation of Christ soundtrack, the opening sequence of Ghost in the Shell, and Nox Arcana's Night of the Wolf. I wish I were better at sound editing on my computer. I'd find a way to mix them together.

Today I sent in a submission for an interesting-looking dance opportunity in November.

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Link time.

The Candy With the Hole: This advertising campaign can't possibly be accidental.

Female Infants Growing Breasts: Another Disaster From Hormones in Milk Production: Horrid, yet the morbid part of me laments there are no pictures.

'The Walking Dead': Zombie awesomeness in series trailer: This looks so good! I need to see it.

Visual Impact Muscle Building: I don't agree with all of the author's opinions, but he did give me some interesting food for thought, and helped me understand why the exercises I've been doing have been making my muscles grow suddenly. I'm intrigued.

Chinchilla Poop Reveals How Much It Rained: "Chinchilla poop is serving an unlikely purpose in one of the world's driest places, Chile's Atacama Desert. The animals' tiny waste pellets are helping scientists reconstruct the rainfall in the region over the last 14,000 years." Lucky scientists, playing with poop all day.

The 200 yard gong shot: About the only time golf has ever been interesting to me. Impressive! But I think gongs make everything better.

Using the Lat Pull Down Machine to Get Strong for Your First Pull-up: Makes perfect sense, but I hadn't thought of it this way. Looks like I have a new way to think about pull-ups.

Eye Wired Open: "When Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence decided to have his badly damaged eye removed from its socket, he chose to replace it not with a prosthetic, but with a wireless camera. The decision, he says, was easy." Cue Terminator II theme music....

Persephone: A lovely painting by Colette Calascione (nudity). I'd love to have this on my wall. In the meantime, it is my desktop image. The other paintings are interesting, too.

Crazy dildo time! Cthulhu | Xenomorph | Zombie. The last one reminds me of that creepy disease porn I wrote a while back.

Miniature Motor Home: I ... I think I want one.

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And just 'cause, here's a picture of me in action, doing jumping Hindu squats. Shaun thought this was the funniest shit, ever. The picture is probably blurry because of his laughter.

Well, it looks like I've got two performances next month. The first is at the Church Street Fetish Fair in Toronto on August 15. The next is opening for Android Lust with 8 Digital at Neutral in Toronto on August 18.

More details as I get them....

Link time!

Go Away: A fun website with lots of hilarious articles. I'm particularly fond of "Permission Slip".

With This Rinse, Performance Improves: Mouthwash can make you a better athlete?

Prey Fish Turns Predator: Fascinating article about a fish who is thriving despite the odds.

Bat Flower, Beautiful and Creepy in Same Time: If I had a garden, I'd love trying to grow these.

Transvestite had sex with a dog at English Heritage castle: My favourite part is the last line: "This was a very rare incident".

5 Social Media Marketing Lessons From Old Spice: This is how to get great buzz for your product....

Coca-Cola apologizes for Dr. Pepper's "2 Girls 1 Cup" Facebook snafu: ...and this is not.

It's the World's Strongest, Most Expensive Beer -- Inside a Squirrel: Brings together the arts of taxidermy and brewing. Absolutely bizarre.

When NOT To Hyphenate Your Name: I dunno. I thought Hardy-Harr was actually kinda cute (thanks, Terre).

Basket Weave Scarf: Syndi gave me a Nifty Knitter for my birthday. I think I want to try making this!

Three hits off the asthma bong and a cup of coffee, and my lungs still feel like they're doing Kegels. Grr.

I didn't get to the gym yesterday. I was too busy with sewing and housework. I'll go today, once my chest doesn't feel so tight.

Link time.

What the…? Cool exercises you’ve probably never seen before: Exercises from the early days of Muscle Beach.

Norwegian Boy Saves Sister from Moose Thanks to World of WarCraft: Video games give real life skills?

This Bendable Bike Can Tie Itself to a Lamp Post: No lock necessary.


In Vitro Habitat: a House Made of Meat!: No word on whether or not David Cronenberg wants a domicile like this.

Listen to YouTube: You can turn the audio from a YouTube video into an mp3 with this resource (thanks, knightky).

Dear Drunk Me: Assessing the after effects of a bender.

Nanny, 30, died from sexual arousal while watching pornography: I feel sorry for the woman's family/friends after this article came out. Also, I think the cat did it.

Wild Cat Found Mimicking Monkey Calls; Predatory Trickery Documented for the First Time in Wild Felids in Americas: One of my cats started calling my sister's name once, when I was calling her to tell her the school bus was on its way. Cats can mimic. I think they just don't do it often.

VersaGripps: These look really handy for my weight training. I wish they weren't so pricey.

My stomach still hurts this morning. Grr.

Dentist visit this afternoon, too. Grr redux.

I dreamed that scalpels, needles, daggers, and other sharp things skewered my thighs, and I had to move carefully lest these poky things bang up against things and hurt me.

I have no idea why my legs were all stabbity, but they looked something like this:



My knitting is coming along nicely, at least, and Shaun is coming to visit me tomorrow, so good stuff is happening. Phew....

Link time:

How to Convert an Ordinary Suit Coat into a Tail Coat: You never know when you're going to need tails.

All-Natural Almond Milk Recipe: A recipe I'm going to try out to see if it helps with my upset stomach issue.

Gimcrack Hospital: A blog I recently discovered for myself that's full of all sorts of interesting ephemera.

The gayness of Nightmare on Elm Street 2 explored : It's really, really gay.

This picture makes me smile.

Two things: I posted a link to the following story on FaceBook. Within minutes, the link was taken down.

Female Genital Mutilation at Cornell University: This story is horrific on many levels, and it's especially shocking that it's being done now. This sounds more like something that would have happened in the 1950s, around the time when so-called oversexed women were getting lobotomies to put them under control. Frances Farmer is rumoured to have received such treatments, and one of my university professors went to high school with a girl who was lobotomized because of her promiscuous behaviour.

So now little girls are being mangled and masturbated on a regular basis by an American physician to make them "normal" and less prone to lesbianism. What the jesusly fuck? I don't even know where to begin to say how this is wrong. There are just too many levels of wrongness.

And FaceBook removed my link to the story. Why am I being censored? Is FaceBook pro-mutilation?

I am perturbed.

Edit: The link is back up. It must have been a glitch in FB's system.

I'm still recovering from a hell of a weekend where I got a crispy sunburned face. The last time I had a burn like this was over twenty years ago, I think. My nose is starting to shed, and I hope I'm not a lizard, because I don't like the thought of a larger nose lying beneath.

My workouts have been paying off. As of yesterday, I have decided the muscles are back. My legs are still thinner than they were five years ago, but they are not scrawny. They have definition again, and I am pleased that my hard work is paying off. My abs are also beginning to make an appearance again. I need to up my cardio to make 'em pop. I don't think I'll ever have a 6-pack. But I will get my 4-pack back. My arms have definition again, too, despite still being far too weak for my liking. 20-lb bicep curls shouldn't be my limit. Gosh! I'm back to doing 200-lb calf raises, and I'm going to keep upping them, because I'm not working to exhaustion. I wonder what my max will be?

I want to go back to a Monday/Wednesday/Friday routine, because my weekends are generally too full for workouts, and Tuesday/Thursday is insufficient, IMO. But I was just too exhausted from the sunburn on Monday to get my workout in. I guess this will be my short week, and then I'll be back to 3x a week beginning next week.

I had an interesting conversation with some people last week about body types. These people have extra weight on them. I'd call them overweight, but not obese. Just fluffy, if you know what I mean. In any case, they informed me that any time you can see ribs on someone, it is "disgusting." Since my ribs are visible when I expand them, my physique is disgusting in their eyes.

It brings me back to the time I was trying on a pair of shorts at a clothing store, and a heavier-set couple of women glared at me and called me disgusting, telling me I needed to eat a sandwich. I refrained from reciprocating in kind. But having been underweight before, I have to say, it's not just fat haters out there. There is a lot of animosity toward thin people, and I just don't understand.

I know I'm not underweight. I am in excellent physical condition, and I work my ass off to get myself that way. I've been fitter, and I'm working my way up to those previous levels. I've also been in poor physical condition before, and never want to be that way again. It feels terrible. It's exhausting. It's depressing.

I don't care if you're fat or if you're skinny. I care that you take care of yourself. I've known plenty of fit fat people, and plenty of unfit thin people, and vice versa. If you sit on your couch all day eating marshmallow Fluff from the jar, that's horrid. If you eat less than 1000 calories a day and chain smoke and run your ass off to keep your weight down, down, down, well, that's horrid, too. You're doing yourself an enormous disservice. Respect your body and take care of it. It's the only one you're ever going to get.

That being said, I have no idea what the hell is going on with this woman's abs. Any ideas? I've never seen that sort of bulge on anyone else before. Is it just unfortunate photoshopping, or does she have alien physiology? I mean, I've met a man before who had extra muscles in his calves. Maybe she has extra muscles in her erectus abdominus? Je ne sais pas.



In other news, I got yarn and knitting needles yesterday so I can teach myself how to knit socks. If all goes as planned, I'll knit while larping next weekend.

Link time.

The Wrath of the Killdozer: A story of vengeance, and a man pushed too far until he became a real-life supervillain.

Making a Single-Pole Pavilion: I'd really like to make this. Anyone wanna help?

German porn star Veronica Moser talks about her love for the porn industry: Wow. I'm ... I'm at a loss. Whatever you do, don't Google images of her, even with safe search on (thanks, tailchaser).

Lady Gaga's Allejandro video: Personally, I don't think she's an amazing singer, and her lyrics are generally terrible. Her dancing is meh, but getting better. Her stage shows are variable. But somehow, I am addicted to her videos. This one is gonna piss the Catholics off but good.

SA vultures under threat from brain-smoking gamblers: Some people will smoke anything.

Johnny Depp: Roman Polanski “is not a predator”: I am disappointed.

Nancy Luce: A poor, sad poet with a great love of chickens.

Girl Genius: Kaja and Phil Foglio's online comic about mad science, romance, and adventure. I'll have to give it a go once I'm through the housework.

I had big plans for today. I was going to make myself a nightgown. But my fabric is too narrow, and I don't have enough yardage to cut in a different way. So that plan is out. Then I thought I'd cut out a pattern so I could work on something else, but I got hit by a wave of exhaustion. I had a nap, but didn't wake up feeling any better. Now I'm exhausted and completely lacking in energy. Boo.

So I'm sitting in my room listening to music with the air conditioner on, waiting to feel halfway normal. I hope I'm not coming down with something. Blargh!

I'll share some links with you before I sit back and try reading my new book: Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter. It's pretty fun, so far.

Dispelling the Glute Myth: This article makes a lot of sense to me, but I must admit I'm boggled by the concept of a gym devoted to butt exercises.

Owl adopts ducklings born in 30ft-high nest: Deadbeat duck mom.

Crazy Antarctica Condition 1 Weather: Bracing (thanks, superbrad).

Remembrance Day: Kenny, from Kenny vs. Spenny, put together the most offensive cartoon I think I've ever seen (thanks, schwartzung).

"Sports from Hell': Hot Boxed: How long can you bake yourself in an oven?

Meet India's tampon king"After a failed attempt with his wife and sisters and a cockeyed do-it-yourself effort with a football bladder full of goat's blood, he'd finally hit upon a surefire way to test the low-cost sanitary napkin he was developing for India's poor. He was passing out free pads to college girls and collecting their used napkins for study. And he had a storeroom full of them. When his mother saw it, she burst into tears and packed her things to move in with his sister."

I am still sewing up a storm. The tabards are all done. I'm now working on a four-tiered skirt in bright green cotton. Then it's shirt time. The shirts worry me. I haven't made shirts in a long time, and I need to deconstruct a shirt in order to make a pattern from which to work. Three shirts need to be made: white, green, and black. And one more skirt in black, but this one is a simple A-line skirt. That will be easy.

The clothes I want for myself can wait: a nightgown, a robe, and a tiered bright green skirt with some floral bits. I also want to make a rose red tunic for knightky, and if there's enough fabric left over, maybe a shirt.

Links? Sure thing.

Meet the Sabre-Toothed Sausage: I didn't know that naked mole rats did the colony/queen thing like bees and ants. Very interesting!

Exterface: Possibly NSFW. High-fashion photography. Very gay. I like the unicorn shoot, especially (thanks, elanya).

For charity, White Castle offers scented candles that give off aroma of its famous burgers: I can't decided if this is awesome or gross (thanks, g026r).

Gene switch rejuvenates failing mouse brains: This makes me think of Flowers for Algernon.

7 Sex Tips from Cosmo That Will Put You in the Hospital: Some of these ideas are horrible! One or two, well, I think YMMV, but are unlikely to have mass appeal.

CRTC approves usage-based internet billing: "The CRTC has approved Bell Canada's request to bill internet customers, both retail and wholesale, based on how much they download each month." Blargh. I am not a big fan of the CRTC.

Neither is this turtle: