Live Dead Nudes

Tonight I am going to go see a movie. It is the all-time American classic (snicker, snort) Zombie Strippers. I know nothing about it other than Robert Englund (think Freddy Krueger) is in it. I've not seen a trailer, I've not read the IMDB link - I want to be surprised! Will there be zombies? Will they take off their clothes?!? Oh, the anticipation!!!

I'm sort of of the mindset that this had better be damn good, because it doesn't start until 945 tonight and I'm driving 35 miles one-way to go see it (oddly, not at the local AMC. Huh.) But on the other hand, I bet I'll have a good time nonetheless, regardless of my proclivity for being negative. You see, the theater has beer! pizza! and couches! which is always good, and I'm going with Minnie who has been my snarky drinking buddy on more than one occasion in the past. And its a movie about stripping zombies, fer christ's sake. How can this possibly be bad?!

Interesting Trivia

Found this while doing some more research on cortisol. Glad I didn't die after *I* 'spawned'.

************************************************************************************************************

Salmon amaze us with their spectacular leaps up waterfalls, in their single-minded quest to return and lay eggs in the freshwater stream of their birth. Then they die. But why? In his book, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky explains.

"If you catch salmon right after they spawn, just when they are looking a little green abound the gills, you find they have huge adrenal glands, peptic ulcers, and kidney lesions; their immune systems have collapsed, and they are teeming with parasites and infections.

"Moreover, the salmon have stupendously high glucocorticoid concentrations in their bloodstreams. When salmon spawn, regulation of their glucocorticoid secretion breaks down. Basically, the brain loses its ability to measure accurately the quantities of circulating hormones and keeps sending a signal to the adrenals to secrete more of them. Lots of glucocorticoids can certainly bring about all those diseases with which the salmon are festering.

"Is this glucocorticoid excess really responsible for their death? Yep. Take a salmon right after spawning, remove its adrenals, and it will live for a year afterward."

Ka-boom!

A spoof on this famous poem.

Original:

This Is Just To Say....

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

And the spoof:

This is Just to Say

I have pulled the
Pin from that grenade
On the desk.

Forgive me.
I thought it was
My keyring,
And

–Jason Nicholas

Snicker, Snort, Guffaw

What does it say about me that I was actually familiar with 95% of these words? What does it say about me that I actually agree with most of the definitions as well?

Hippie words and phrases and what they really mean

Oh! Oh My God!

I've been commenting (ok, maybe not to you, dear readers) over the past several days about the fact that this holiday weekend has given me a taste of what it feels like to not be in school anymore. I didn't have my regular morning class this past Monday, and did not have *any* homework due for this morning's class, so effectively, I've had nothing to do for the past seven days. Combine that with the lack of wedding dress, and voila! Stress-free days!

Well, stress-free about that, anyhow.

But it gets even better! After today's class, I only have two more weeks left until my month-long break! This in and of itsself is fantastic news - obviously - but made even more so by the fact that my math was off by a week and I thought I had *3* weeks to go! I just lost an entire week of school in the course of 3 minutes of varifying with the school's website! Whoo hoo!

I think today is going to be a good day. At the rate I'm going, I'm going to find $40 in an old coat jacket, win the lottery, *and* miraculously have my sleep apnea disappear whilst in class today! Sweeeet!

Fuck! Fuckity fuck fuck!

I am just trying to print out three goddamn pieces of paper!! Is that so !#@!@ing hard?!?

Irritating

People, if something is 50 years old, it is not an antique. Hell, its barely vintage at that point. Retro? Possibly. But definitely not an antique.

When *I* was growing up (Jesus Christ, did that just come out my mouth?!?!), an antique was something that was at least 100 years old, and it usually pertained to furniture, of which my mother loved to collect. Big, ugly, dark pieces of furniture that we really didn't have room for in our house. We'd either pick stuff up from real antique shops in the countryside, or some obscure relative would pass on and mom'd get another huge, old piece of something or other 'that used to belong to [dead even longer relative]'. Whoopee.

But for what its worth, it stuck. And I grit my teeth every time I see someone post something on Craigslist or eBay after cleaning out their closet or piecing out some dead relatives estate, declaring: "Antique! So I will charge something ridiculous for it!"

That English Beat button from 1982? Not - I repeat - not an antique. Shut. Up.

To be fair, I found a definition of antique on the interwebs:

An item which is at least 50 to 100 years old and is collected or desirable due to rarity, condition, utility, or some other unique feature. Motor vehicles, tools and other items subject to vigorous use in contrast, may be considered antiques in the U.S. if older than 25 years, and some electronic gadgets of more recent vintage may be considered antiques.

Hmmm. Interesting. Too bad they're wrong.

Oh, and While You're Waiting

I could use a little advice.

Mags continues to be a fantastic and fascinating creature. I've peppered this blog with some of the more interesting snippets that we've come across, but that's dropped off somewhat in recent times. Methinks that has something to do with the fact that we're getting more used to the wild stuff that comes out of her mouth, and it no longer seems so strange. :)

Perhaps you can recall some of the stories about the babies she was carrying in her tummy. (Harmless, but still disconcerting to hear at times.) Or her imaginary sister, who's name, age and temperment tend to change frequently -- often in the same story. And really, we let her go on about whatever she wants to. Letting a vivid imagination take seed seems like an important part of childhood. Plus, when we're not totally confused, its quite entertaining!

For the past several months, Mags has been on a baby kick; that is to say, she pretends to be a baby again. She likes to be picked up, carried around, have her 'diaper' changed, and only wants to talk in baby talk. Fingers crossed that this was just a phase, I played along when it wasn't inconvenient, like time to get ready for school, or when we're trying to cross a street or whatnot. And the gamble paid off; she seems to be done with that phase -- just in time to start the next one: being the mama while *I* am the baby.

Oh sure, she refuses to carry me around; but she will hold my hand if I need it. I'm only allowed to speak in baby talk, she takes great pleasure in comforting me when I drop her off at school ('Now don't be sad, baby. I'll be right here and you can come pick me up later!') and 'reading' to me in the evenings ('What are they doing in that picture, baby? [pause] That's right! Tigger is jumping up and down! Now what about in this picture? [pause] That's right!...') We have had a few bouts of 'You can't tell me what to do 'cause I'm the mom!', which have quickly been nipped in the bud, but mostly its just harmless fun and I'm willing to play along with it if the situation permits. Strange to hear all of my parenting parroted back at me, though....

So here's where it has started getting sticky. She likes to feed me a 'bottle', or more correctly a fistful of empty air followed by loud drinking sounds and pretend belching, but its gone one step further. In fact, at the wedding, I almost spat out my mouthful of non-imaginary drink when she offered to breastfeed me, and even went so far as to cup an imaginary breast.

(screeching brakes)

Yeah, not one I've come across in any of my parenting books to date. On one hand, I'm really glad she's caught on that breastfeeding is natural and normal and some parents do it and some parents don't and that whole schtick. And again, more of my parenting was parroted back at me today when she informed me - hand cupping another imaginary breast, good lord - that 'Some babies are bottle babies but you are a breastfeeding baby.' Well. Ok then. Ummmm, sure.

Seems I've painted myself into a corner. Don't wanna burst her idea that breastfeeding is normal and completely ok, but need to really be slapping up some boundaries here (no, I have NOT actually breast-fed off of my child. I usually make up some lame-o excuse about how I'm full or the like. Weak, I know.) If she wanted to breast feed her doll it'd be ok, so what do I tell her? This may seem like a very simple and obvious question, but every time I'm confronted with it my brain just locks up and all I can think is, "You want me to WHAT?!?"

That being said, any suggestions? Anyone else encounter a similar problem with loved ones in their lives? Anyone?

Anyone?

Oh, and just to cover my ass: Dear Universe, I am grateful my 4 year old is not shooting heroin into her eyeballs and that my biggest problems are that my child doesn't like to go to sleep while its still light out -- oh, and that she has a breast-feeding fetish. Yours truly.

Wedding Pictures!

Here they are, the highly anticipated wedding photos! True, they're not *mine*, and true, there really aren't any fantastic dress pictures, but they are from quite a good photographer who has offered to help me do a formal shoot with the bride post-nuptuals so that I *can* get good shots (so helpful! Many thanks!)

Until then, photos a la Goliath. As soon as I figure out how to change the file sizes of my pix I will be uploading mine to Flickr, but keep in mind it took me an hour and a half to upload one photo this morning, so there might be just a bit of a delay. :)

Oh, and I am documenting how the whole thing went, but I wanted to get pix posed first. Hopefully by tomorrow.

Stood Up

Got my informational interview out of the way Friday morning. I think it went pretty well. At the very least, I got a lot of ooohs and aahhs over the wig and hat I brought in as visual aides. The obviously-drawn-and-crappy-last-minute chart I drew outlining positions inside the costume shop? Not so much. (shrug.)

Best part about it is the fact that I never did my information interview prior to the speech and I still did fine. Oh, I definitely tried to line on eup, don't get me wrong, but it did not go smoothly. The Opera never called me back, and about a week before the speech I realized they weren't going to either and I had to find someone else to do it. There's a theater in Palo Alto I'm going to apply for an internship at, and while I didn't want to mix the two, I put in an email to the director seeing if there was someone who could help me. She hooked me up with a woman who agreed to do it via email (she was very busy) and would have them to me by Thursday night.

[crickets]

So! Friday night I busted my ass coming up with the info on the interwebs, and did pretty good. Only about a 5-10% BS rate. I was also able to hand over the email dialogue to my teacher, outlining the fact that I got shined, and would she please take that into consideration? I think she'll probably take that into consideration.

Mostly I'm just glad its done. Everyone else in class has to do it the last day of class, when we also have a final project due. No doubling up for me, thanks. Lets spread this out as much as we can.

Oh, and that woman? Called me as I was driving home from class Friday afternoon. She'd gotten totally swamped with a last minute photoshoot at the theater and just did not have time. The answered questions were in my email waiting for me when I got home. I forwarded them right off to my teacher. :)

Hooray for ALternate Realities

Me and the 4 year old fashion consultant hoofed it over to Av3nue to buy me a dress for the Red/Gold wedding last night after dinner. For those not in the know, Av3nue is basically a 'big girl' clothing store (although one might argue that a size 14 is the size of the average American woman, so why is it in this store?) They had some fairly nice stuff; nice enough to keep them in mind if I were to need say, clothes for a job interview or the like.

Truth be told, I'd already been to the store Wednesday afternoon with the intention of buying something already. Here's the problem: I know that I am (cough) pounds overweight, but I really only wear tshirts and shorts and jeans and I've done a fantastic job of training myself to never actually look at my body below the neck in the mirror, so I've managed to avoid it pretty well. Really, I walk around with a totally different idea of what I look like in my head (idea girl!) and kindly put, this does not match reality at all. It was a huge shock to actually see my lumpy body wearing a dress in front of the full length mirror at the store. So much so that I got redressed, calmly rehung up the dresses, and sprinted for the door. Long live denial!

But jeans and a tshirt would be wildly inappropriate for this wedding so I grabbed the kid and headed out. I let Mags pick the dress, which was of course the one dress I hadn't tried on earlier in the week. It was also, of course, the dress I ended up buying. Turns out this store actually sells womens shoes that run between 9-13, which is a fucking miracle, so I bought a natty pair of red patent leather wedges (!!!) to go with my outfit. Sadly, their accessory selection was a bit weak, so I'll have to try and scrape something together this morning. Maybe that accessory will be a thick wool sweater, because on this, the day of the Red/Gold outdoor picnic wedding, the clouds have rolled in, the temps have dropped, and suddenly my sassy sundress sounds simply silly. Brrr.

Pictures to follow. :)

Wait, Who am I Kidding?

Down time? I'm on crack. I have an enormous presentation due tomorrow for class at 8am that I haven't even started.

Oh, I'm sorry, in all of the excitement I've forgotten to mention that I'm back in school, haven't I? Yeah, I started back at the [art school] 8 weeks ago, and am taking 3 classes this quarter, which turns out to be a pretty hefty work load in hindsight. It was a fairly last minute decision, one that I made after agreeing to do the previously mentioned wedding dress. Its added its own flavor of stress, but I've only 3 weeks left to go, and then I get a month off, which is a nice carrot.

None of my classes are particularly 'fun' in my opinion, but I've put them off basically as long as I can and need to just get them out of the way. One of them is a computer pattern-making class, which I really dislike, and in fact am retaking it because I hated it so much the first time around I dropped it mid-quarter (I'm proud to say that's realy the only class in my school career that I've done that for.) It's a specialized CAD class, I'll never use it again in the field I want to go in, and the teacher is pretty ineffective, so every week is really an exercise in sucking it up. Then comes Career Development, which is useful in that it teaches you resume and interviewing skills which frankly I could use, and has a nice Psych 101 flavor to it as well, but it feels like a bit pf a stretch to actually make this an 11 week course IMHO. I also took (sigh) Speech class. I say took because it was an intensive online class that lasted only the first 5.5 weeks of the quarter, which effectively makes the rest of the quarter only have two classes (well, and a wedding dress.)

I know, I know, online Speech sounds completely ridiculous and bogus. Admittedly, parts of it were (reading assignments? Not sure I *ever* cracked open that textbook, ) but I can honestly say I was able to take stuff out of that class that I could use again. Like this presentation tomorrow, for example. We had to give about 6 speeches during the course (informational, impromptu and persuasive,) all via webcam. Then you'd have to upload them to the site, and watch the videos everyone else did, and then critique them in a chatroom setting. For the record, giving a speech to a camera is not really any easier than doing it in front of an audience. In fact, it involved this odd factor of having to train yourself to starte directly at a camera, which feels really unnatural too.

Anyhow, my wheels are slowly rolling through the sacred halls of education once again. And the best part is, after this quarter, I only have to take two more classes -- and then I graduate! Yes! You read that correctly! G-R-A-D-U-A-T-E! Miracle of miracles! After approximately ten million years of various paths of higher education, I will be done! Granted, I'm only this close because I switched my degree from a BA to an AA, but I'll take it! Turns out most theaters only need the 2 year degree (plus some experience, but who's counting?) which saves me from years of classes I don't need and would writhe in pain taking (turns out once you get past the sewing part, a Costuming degree and a Fashion degree veer pretty far off from each other.)

Buoyed by that thought, I'm going to go make up a somewhat bogus career presentation now, and will BS-ing like mad by 9am tomorrow. Think of me and seethe with jealousy!

Load Off My Mind

Wow. I cannot tell you how good I feel right now (well, if you ignore the 4-day headache, anyhow.) Mostly, I am just relaxed. A huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

Why, you ask? Well, I've kept meaning to blog about it, but have somehow never gotten around to the fact that I've been making my friend Red's wedding dress for the past 2.5 months. And just about an hour ago, I handed it off to be delivered to the bride. Freedom! Terrible freedom!

I have to admit, I've been fairly stressed about the whole process though (Me? Stressed? You jest!) Not only did I make the dress, but I designed it, too, so I get to worry about how it will be received (had I only made the dress, I could just shrug and say "her design" if folks didn't like it.) The dress has been sharing a house with a 4 year old and a cat this whole time too, which has felt a bit like having a ticking time bomb somewhere -- although I basically staked off a room of the house that was only accessible with my retinal scan to try and quell that fear. One of the fabrics used was a gorgeous two-tone silk chiffon (think expensive spiderwebs,) floated on gossamer wings -- but would snag or bruise if you so much waved a pin in the air near it. Plus there was this equation: the more completed the dress became multiplied by the decrease in time until the wedding equals the magnitude of catastrophic fuck-up-edness in any error on the dress (feel free to diagram that. I can totally do the x-y curve in my head) , which had a pretty high pucker factor. I used a lot of energy just worrying this whole time.

But, its out of my hands now. And really, if I stop an think about it, its all gonna be fine. Red is really the only one who has to like the dress, and in the midst of my explanation for why I thought particular features of this dress design were good, Red interrupted me and exclaimed,"You're amazing!", so I think we're covered there. The cat and the kid? They really could've cared less. Nightmare chiffon? Well, there are a few imperfections, but most of them are in places that should hopefully get very little attention, or at least not get attention until folks start to drink. :) Red was a very chill bride through the whole process, and she's a bit of a chatterbox so I was entertained through all of the fittings. And speaking of fittings, I finally get my Wednesday nights back, which had been lost since this all began.

Plus, I got a bunch of real-world experience (and how!), learned a few new things, and got another piece for my slowly-growing portfolio and resume. And I'm getting paid. :D

I'm not going to post any pictures of the design or actual dress until the wedding, because there are a few of you folks who may actually be at the wedding, and I don't want to steal Red's thunder. Well, that and I don't actually have any pictures yet. True to form, this was another fairly-close-to-the-deadline project (the wedding is Saturday afternoon,) so I should have some pics to post by early next week.

Until then, I'm gonna chill the fuck out and get some well-deserved down time.

That Which Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Stronger

I have to do an informational interview with someone who works in the field I'd like to eventually go into for a class I am taking this quarter. Luckily I have a teacher who was very happy to give me the direct phone number of the costume shop at the SF Opera. Hooray!

....

Can I just tell you it took me 5 days to screw up the courage to call, and even then I've spent the whole morning finding other things to do other than to pick up the phone and cold-call the Opera. (I'm never as productive as when I am procrastinating from doing something else.)

If I do actually get someone who agrees to do this - you know, someone with a name - I'll be kind of nervous, but I know that I just have to be well-prepared before I go in and I should be fine. But I hate cold calling people. My god! Heart racing! Palms sweating! Clenched stomach! There's a reason I identify with being an introvert. Blech.

As it turns out, I think I may have unintentionally (no, seriously!) called during lunch hour, so I got to leave a message. Kind of a best case scenario as far as I'm concerned. Made my request and I didn't have to talk to a living being. Believe me, I debated whether or not to call after hours and leave a message, but that screams 'completely terrified', even to me. Not the kind of impression I want to make.

So, now I wait. Maybe have a stiff drink, too. :)

Made it All Worth It

I don't care that it looks like the pictures are obviously of someone's personal favorites, and that they eventually taper off into people pictures, but a picture of my dress ended up on an offical SVdP link: http://www.svdp-sf.org/DISCARDED/deyoung/index.html.

(happy sigh)

More importantly. according to the post-auction email all the designers received last week, Discarded to Divine 2008 raised over $84,000 which is over double the amount of last year and they had over 1,000 attendees which was over triple of last year’s number. Damn, 84K! Go SVdP!

Anyhow, if you're interested in readig the SF Chron article, or seeing pictures from the runway show or any of that, the link to the event is here.

Eco-LIARS!

Bamboo flooring indeed.

Husband and I were at HD yesterday checking out a few things for the yurt, including flooring. The idea has been to get bamboo flooring pretty much all along; it's renewable, looks good, lasts long, etc.

But in holding it in hand at the store I noticed something: only the top 1/4" is actually bamboo! In the words of Mags: what the...?!? Out of 3/4" (possibly even a full inch) of flooring, only that small fraction is bamboo? Gee, that seems less like flooring and more like...laminate. Veneer, even!

After a while I realized, well, maybe solid bamboo is not very realistic. I mean, it is hollow, so in order to have solid bamboo, you'd need to have some seriously big mothafucking pieces of bamboo lying around. Sort of a la redwood size, I'd harbor to guess.

Still seems misleading to call something that is at least 3/4 regular wood 'bamboo flooring', though. Enough for me to stomp around wasting emotional energy and grumbling about it in a self-righteous manner, anyhow (because I've got nothing better to do with my time or emotions these days.)

Ooh, maybe I can make picket signs out of bamboo and go protest at HD. Hmmm, what should my slogan be? I know -- 'I've been bamboo-zled!' Tee.

Jesus FUCK Already, Woman!!

After a big loss in North Carolina and a narrow win in Indiana, Sen. Hillary
Clinton vowed to stay in the race until her party has a nominee.

Read: Regardless of the fact that people like her less and less and she's *not* doing her party any favors by sticking around, Hillary Clinton is gonna ride this out through 6 more states to the absolute, bitter, desperate end.

Kill me.

Did That Just Come Out of Your Mouth?

This actually happened in my class today:

Teacher:...So, if you could just stand up, tell us your name, your dream job, and your plans to get there...

Student: Yeah, my name is [name] and I plan on being a dominatrix because then I'll only have to work like 4 hours a week and can spend more time developing my clothing boutique.

Class: