Posts from May 2008

So I have this theoretical situation brewing in the back of my mind about a hypothetical scenario in which I might have the need to create an ambiance of fog around an area, through which perhaps an actor will move.
(I'm being circumlocutious because that's really funny when you're as hammered as I am. And I am absolutely sure that the word circumlocuitous or circumlocutious is a word, and I refuse to look it up, but I wish I was sure of the placement of that final I. Spellcheck is unsurprisingly unhelpful.)

Anyway. The venue wherein I was considering this creation of artificial fog has a fog machine, but its use has been banned due to a particular colleague's severe allergy to the stuff.
So I thought perhaps dry ice would suffice.
I asked @zobar and he shrugged; he studied chemistry, but not very intensely, so he knows very little about the theatrical applications of dry ice. Unsurprising.

"Hm," I said. "Who do I know who would know?"
I mentally ran through all my friends, relatives, and acquaintances before I realized that this is it. I've finally gone native. I'm finally thinking like a Buffalonian.

In my native culture, my reaction above would have been, "Where can I look that up?"

But in Buffalo, you don't look stuff like that up, you ask your friends and find somebody who knows about it.

Because everybody in Buffalo knows everybody else, and an expert is usually only one or two degrees of separation away. Knowledge and social obligation go more or less hand-in-hand; networks of favors and those indefinable interpersonal connections that you have to nurture; moms' anniversaries and kids' birthdays and the kinds of parties where you stand around in the attached garage fishing cans of beer out of big plastic ice buckets. You've got a problem, somebody related by blood or marriage, or possibly who you went to school with, either is a guy, or knows a guy, who owns a business that deals with that, or that studied it in school, or that knows the guy who wrote the law about it. It's all in the family, somehow.

I admit this is a more entertaining and satisfying system than just looking shit up. And it's been remarkably effective in a lot of things-- I never look online for custom t-shirts now that I skate on a team with a woman who owns a silkscreening facility.

Anyhow, I just thought I'd share my cultural observation here.

Incidentally after last night's roller derby bout, the Knockouts and Saucies are facing a winner-takes-all situation for the league championship at the next bout. May 31st. I'm serious, it will be really exciting.

Oh hey, I heard a bunch of you were joining Allentown as a group?
And going to Mia's fitness class?

If you are, I'll see you there this morning.

This morning, we will be working on snap-kicks.
Do you know what that is?
Me neither.
Frankly, I'm terrified. :D

I never know what @zobar is telling you about me.

I have one photo to share, though it's posted elsewhere, of the lesbian shotgun wedding.


It was lovely.
I will post the rest of my London photos at some point. Most of them are of Z making stupid faces over weird food.

I am here to do the obligatory pimpage of roller derby. There's a bout tonight. 7 pm, Rainbow Rink, 101 Oliver St. in North Tonawanda.
But what's really amusing is that my team isn't skating, we're hosting it, and we've decided to do so in costume.
The bout theme is "Hell on Wheels", and various of the girls are bringing all their biker friends.
So we're dressing like biker chicks.

If you've ever wanted to see me in a pleather miniskirt, tonight's the night.


Unrelated: Chita is on the shelf by the picture window in the living room, stalking the birds outside. She just crawled slightly backward to see them better, and... fell off the shelf. It was pretty funny.
She's pretending she meant to do that, of course.

It's official, we are seriously actually going to go to the UK in three days to attend a lesbian shotgun wedding.
I am terribly excited.
There are apparently no consequences for doing it all at the last minute.
If I'd known that I wouldn't have spent the last five months worrying constantly about it.

Eh it'll be awesome. I have a good feeling about it all.

I'm totally going to find the weirdest shit I possibly can and feed it to @zobar and be all, "This is normal! Don't ruin my cultural experience!"
It will be brilliant.

Z has spent today angrily calling things "rubbish" and "shite". He claims to be warming up.

I have bought my ex-girlfriend a baby t-shirt that says "I Love The USA" on it in sequins. (Really a baby shirt, for her baby. I'm not getting her anything for her wedding, because I just dropped three grand on getting there and finding somewhere to sleep.)
I also bought her Richard Scarry books that will teach her child American words (like "truck") and THE WRONG SPELLING of things. I am trying to warp him already.
MUA HA HA.

However, Lowly Worm did not appear in either book. I thought he was a consistent recurring character. What the hell book is Lowly Worm in??? Someone help me out here.

I cracked a rib with my tit.
Yes I did.

We were scrimmaging. I was trying to block the opposing jammer. She got past me, and then got taken out. So she went down sprawling, and I was behind her with no time to avoid her. I went partway over her, and my pelvis landed on her head. And me? WHAMMO, right on my tits.
I got up and kept going, and made it back to the pack right behind her, but I wasn't much good for anything.
I think I cracked a rib. Landed flat on my chest, and you'd think my boobs would squash pretty much infinitely and absorb the shock, but no. My rib is fucking killing me.

I then skated in a bout (I hurt it last week and then our bout was Saturday night) and discovered, rather the hard way, that taking really hard hits to the shoulder on that side was exquisitely painful. It was really really unpleasant.

It keeps almost being better, but it's not quite. It's bothering me again today. I've got to keep my torso, shoulder, and arm immobile for a couple of days so it stops hurting, but just you try doing that in your daily life. It's no good.

Anyway, I just had to share my latest injury. I totally cracked my rib with my boob.

But, on the plus side, unrelatedly, I own a pair of mesh ruffle panties in zebra stripe. They're very fifties. I love them. I did not buy them to wear as underwear, but as outerwear, in true derby fashion. I wore them tonight over opaque black tights and under a black pleated miniskirt.

I have fashion sense, all right, but it's the fashion sense of a girl half my age and half my size. But you know what? Fuck it!

Actually I recently discovered the world's most awesome thing: The Campaign for Real Booty.
Ha! I'm so sending in a picture.


Here's a bonus picture for y'all. This is how long my hair is. It needs a trim. Also, that is the dress I plan to wear to my friend's wedding. I bought it from pinupgirlclothing.com and love it. It's not like anything I've ever had, and it's stretchy enough that it fits right. Yay! It kind of shows off my booty, which is exciting: I have never before had a booty. But for some reason, the ten pounds or so I gained over the summer has now settled firmly in my hips and ass, which is really kind of exciting.
I had fans at Saturday night's bout! People I didn't know! Some fortysomething lesbians who very shyly asked for a picture of my butt! It was very cute. I blew them a kiss during my intro skate.

Hm, the image uploading thing doesn't seem to be working. Well, here's one that's a smaller filesize, maybe that'll work better. It's not the same picture but you get the same idea.

I should probably mention on here that there's roller derby tomorrow night. I'll be skating, it's my big comeback after losing nearly two months to my fucked-up knees (and the flu). I'm out of shape but more strategic, or that's what I'm telling myself.

If you only make it to one this season, this is probably the one to hit.

Tomorrow (Saturday April 5th) night, doors at 7 (show up ~6:45 to get your ticket). Rainbow Rink, 101 Oliver St. North Tonawanda, just off the Twin City Highway.

Nickel City Knockouts vs. Devil Dollies

It's going to be fast, hard-hitting, and dirty-- the Dollies are winless this season, and hungry, and have several key players injured, so they will be scrapping, while the Knockouts have a reputation for dirty play that may or may not be warranted.
We will find out how warranted it is, because we have visiting refs from NYC's veteran roller derby league, the Gotham Girls, assisting our officials. They're a Division I WFTDA team, currently ranked 5th in the nation, which they're eager to improve-- they've never faced three of the top four teams.
(Didn't know roller derby had national rankings? Oh yes, it does, and they're more hotly contested every year. ) Anyway, they're Big Noise in the derby world, and awesome to boot.
We'll also have some visitors from the Albany roller derby team, who are now my homies-- six of them are making the trek. This is Albany's first bouting season, and we badly want to scrimmage them but don't know when we'll have time.

It's also not going to be quite as crowded, I don't think-- previous bouts this season have been standing room only, crowded as hell, but presale figures are lower this time-- maybe it's hockey burnout, and nobody wants to see a sport? Maybe six months is too long to have a continuous sustained interest in an amateur sport? Whatever it is, there's a good chance you'll actually be able to get a beer at this bout, and maybe even sit down, and most definitely take a piss without waiting 45 minutes in line-- the rink has added restroom facilities just for us, and bleachers.

So if you've been meaning to come catch a bout, this is probably the one to see.

I have just successfully brewed mead. This is something I've kind of always wanted to do. In college one of my roommates was a biochemistry major who worked in a lab on a project to determine the precise locations of proteins on the cell walls of yeast. He decided somewhere during this that he just couldn't get enough of yeast cultures, so he began brewing mead in our kitchen.
He started off using bread yeast, and did some recipe that involved a long fermentation. Then he got busy, so he left it kind of too long. By the time he siphoned the yeast out into a plastic pitcher (we were all class, people), it was... Well, he gave me a glass of it, and I took a sip, and made a face. It was strong, somewhat sour, a bit pungent, rather horrible.
But he'd spent a long time on it. So I smiled, and waited until he looked the other way, and then held my nose and drank the whole thing down.

A little while later, noticing my glass was empty, he happily poured me more.
I waited a bit, and did the same thing again.

Then I fell over and lay on the floor for about twelve hours while the carpet talked to me and fairies buzzed around my head.

We'll just say it wasn't the most mellow drunk I've ever had.

But I remain convinced that mead is great, and I've had some I bought in liquor stores that was OK, but expensive. You can get it at premier for $15 a wine bottle. And it's good, but it's not as good as $15 wine. (I normally buy wine that's between $5-10 a bottle, with the $15-20 range being saved for either proven favorites from vineyards I know, or something personally recommended by a friend. Hey. I am all class, people. Also I've been working really hard to NOT develop expensive tastes, with limited success. [Sadly I can't drink Johnny Red but must drink Johnny Black. I refuse to try any of the higher grades for fear I'll like them still better. Bastards.])

So I made a "quick mead" recipe I found on the Internet. Side note: did you know we have an excellent home brewing supply store right in Kenmore? Yes! Niagara Tradition, on Sheridan just past Military. Friendly staff, decent stock, very knowledgeable and helpful, and a good selection. So there's my plug.

Here is my recipe, and in true Livejournal fashion, about fifteen pages of mumbling:

I invested about $20 into this venture, buying sanitizer, plastic tubing, four fermentation locks, yeast, honey, and ginger. (The last two I got at Wegman's. If anyone knows any good farmer's markets or whatevers that'll sell you unprocessed honey, I want to try that next. The Coop maybe?)
As primary fermenting containers, I didn't purpose-buy anything-- I'm just using the big glass growlers you can buy beer in at Premier. They have like a two-dollar deposit, but the same bottle costs four dollars at Niagara Tradition, so I think I'm doing good. And if I want more, well then I'll just have to drink more fancy beer, which is a terrible fate only not at all terrible. (The fermentation locks and rubber stoppers to fit them (size 6.5) are about $1.50/$2 each and are infinitely reusable.)

My first batch is a success: light, slightly sweet, slightly fizzy, tasting of honey and ginger and a little bit of yeast. I don't know if it's called "quick mead" because it is only supposed to take four days (I took a week because I had it in too cold a room at first), or because it is sparkling, but it's good. Weak, and probably mostly non-alcoholic, but quite good. (Fermenting it longer might get rid of the yeasty taste, but it would also make it less sweet. I think I like it as it is.)

I have a second batch going but it's something more complex, requiring 18 days fermentation, then another 2 weeks secondary fermentation in the bottle.
I think I need to buy a bottle capper. But on the bright side, the fact that I haven't taken back my deposit bottles means I am well-stocked in glass bottles. Five cents apiece ain't bad for these suckers. I should take the cans back, though.

ok 2 things in this post.
Yes we are attending a lesbian shotgun wedding.
It's not... exactly... a shotgun wedding. It's a civil partnership ceremony. (You can't call them weddings!! Weddings are for heterosexuals. But at least there are civil partnerships now.) And it was scheduled before my friend got knocked up. But she will be quite obviously pregnant for the ceremony.
See, they scheduled the ceremony, and said, "Once we're legal partners, we'll have a child!" And that was good. But you know, the human body is not a machine. So my friend figured, what the hell, let's start trying now. They've had this reciprocal agreement worked out for ages with a m/m couple down the street, that one of them would donate the, you know, necessary, when it came time. So my friend figured she'd start making the attempt now, and since it usually takes six months to a year to be successful, she'd most likely get pregnant shortly after the ceremony, or perhaps just before, which would also be nice.
Anyway...
Yeah, it worked the first time. So she'll be nearly ready to pop by the end of April. And so it's going to look like a shotgun wedding. As long as they're married before the baby's born, it's all legal, and I think they'll both be allowed to put their names on the birth certificate, which is the important part.


I stayed in a hostel in London (with said friend, actually! Ten years ago now) and it wasn't bad at all, but @zobar is young and not wise in the ways of the world. It is fine and I really doubt anyone will molest his butt. Not with me there to protect him.
But the exchange rate... oh my GOD, I may have to sell my body to pay for booze. Because everything's, like, Manhattan prices there-- what costs you a fiver here costs you a fiver there, and beer is like, seven-- except it's POUNDS not DOLLARS and a pound is TWO DOLLARS NOW! *faints*
It was $1.67 when I was there. It was a long time ago. It was painful even then. Yikes.

Anyhow.
The second thing:
Chita!!
Napping with me:

Yes she's licking Z's beard in the photo below. He calls her his "assistant" now that he's working from home, and she sits on his lap and licks herself and sometimes him, and headbutts him while he's on conference calls. It's cute.

Aw I guess I can't get those to work-- they're really big files but I figured it could resize them. Bummer.

Apparently if you're not on (e:strip) you're not considered human company.
Chita should have her own (e:strip) journal so @zobar would take her more seriously. E:Chita isn't taken.

So I am sorry I do not update more. I am on strike over at Livejournal for today-there is a Content Strike protesting the latest round of, "We Own The Site So Fuck You Who Generate All Its Content And Actually Make It Interesting To Anyone In The World, Including Our Advertisers" wankery. You realize now that LJ has been sold so many times it actually belongs to a Russian company with weird shady Russian ties to Russian things.
But apparently some of them are Jewish, and so the fact that the opposition has chosen to have a Content Strike on Purim is Deeply Significant. Which means, at the moment, that I am either Part of the Solution, or maybe I'm Part of the Problem, over there.
I wish I didn't have my entire adult life invested in the archives there. I am serious, it is my entire adult life. I got that journal in 2001, when I was just about to turn 21. I've updated it almost daily ever since. (I think I've gone up to a week without touching it, but that's unusual.) It's not about the site, it's not about the server architecture, it's absolutely not about the graphic design. But it is, somewhat, about the communities. I've had diaries on and off since I was barely literate, and could never keep them up, because nobody would ever read them. Moving to an online journal (I still don't think of it or treat it as a blog) has not only made me stick with it, but is also far more responsible than my $100,000 creative writing degree for any maturation or improvement that has occurred in my writing. It's also made it possible for me to engage in any kind of introspection / retrospection about my life, because I have no real other records of what I did, thought, said, or felt at any given time in my life, and my memories, where they exist, are often wrong. Memory's a tricky thing.

There's also the added controversy that... well, yes, two or three members of my roller derby league are also members of Livejournal, and read my LJ. I write on there about my whole life, including derby. When I wrote about our last bout, one of the readers linked it to her whole team. (I sort of half-expected she would, but I hadn't said anything I felt was controversial, so I wasn't worried. HA!)
There was a small explosion. And the league's governing Board thought that perhaps it could tell me what to do in regards to my own personal journal. I simply excised any mention of the league by its full name and told them if they wanted more than that, they could fuck themselves. Not in so many words, but more or less. If I'm not going to let some shady Russians who own my servers tell me what I can and can't write about, I'm certainly not letting some overzealous volunteers in an organization that has taken over my life tell me what to do. For one thing, the volunteers don't have Putin on their side.

Anyhow. That's my deep thoughts on "blogging", a word I hate. I am sincerely and truly glad that I have a site I can journal on whose owner I can get drunk with on a semi-regular basis. @paul, you are better than lj user=bradfitz, in that I know you and you don't take money from shady Russians.
Well, that I know of.

And here's the real litmus test of whether roller derby peeps read my blog here too (how thoroughly am I being stalked?): the kerfuffle is that I dared to mention that there was controversy over the officiating at our last bout (March 8th), and that I felt like the skaters have really improved from last season but the refs haven't had the same training opportunities and may need some more support. Apparently saying that on the Internet is tantamount to tossing a primed grenade into one of our Board meetings.
I am thinking of making myself a t-shirt (I used to do that a lot, hand-silkscreen/stenciling t-shirts) that just says Trouble on it. I already have one of those O'Reilly t-shirts from ThinkGeek that says "I'm blogging this", which I may just wear to practice next week and see if anyone's head fucking explodes. HA HA.
Sorry. I actually already have a shirt stencil I made in college, that just says, "difficult", because that's what my mother told me I was.
Anyone else want one?

I'm also sort of slowly edging into radical size-acceptance politics. My experience over a year ago of having a doctor be completely disgusted with me and unable to help me at all because I was "obese" has been wearing at me, and so when somebody linked to an article at Shapely Prose (http://www.kateharding.net) I read it, and then spent the rest of the week devouring the site's archives. I love Kate Harding, but I also love the two other women who contribute there, Fillyjonk and Sweet Machine. And I discovered that Sweet Machine is ME:
i.e., Too fat to not be fat, too skinny to be accepted as fat, completely fucked when it comes to finding clothes that fit, etc.
I also got kinda addicted to the blog Junkfoodscience, because OMG SCIENCE. (Incidentally, that's the source for the study @zobar was writing about the other day.)
The movement is more commonly called Fat Acceptance but I'm more interested in the concept that (radical as it seems) it's just not right to judge someone based solely on their body shape/size/condition. Even on their perceived health. A person is a person, whether they're 135 or 535 pounds. Most size-based discrimination is really income-based or race-based, but hidden behind an acceptable veneer. And almost 100% of the "concern" people express at other people who are too fat, too thin, or engaging in "risky" behaviors like having a glass of wine while pregnant, having a cigarette ever, or, you know, walking down the street while fat: it's the same as concern trolls on the Internet, and it's not about concern for a stranger whose life you know nothing about. It's about the person expressing the concern feeling morally superior. All the "drive-by mommies" who tell other mothers they're not parenting right because their kid is only wearing one sock because the other fell off: Concern trolls. Concern trolls. Concern trolls.
The moral of the story is, mind your own fucking business unless you truly, truly think you can help. Be fucking nice to people and have some goddamn manners. That's all it's really about. And don't assume you know everything because you read a study in the Times that said something, because media-reported studies are usually incomplete, biased, or just plain fabricated. (Just go read junkfoodscience's archives. I'm serious. It's addictive. And fascinating. And depressing. Did you know being obese raises your risk for... surviving a heart attack, or not having one at all? Yup. Take that, concern trolls. ,
And, ha ha, )
So anyhow. I'm kind of glad that this obsession is one that @zobar can kind of share. He gets shit for being a skinny tall person constantly. I get shit for having fat tits all the time. It's a common interest. Go figure.
So, that's me. How have you all been? I do read on here occasionally, but not enough.

I think I am going to become a size-acceptance activist.
But I am not necessarily going to do this in a conventional way.
I am going to do it by making porn.
I think that would be awesome.

I recently got my fat ass onto a scale to see if I'd lost any weight, since I've been tracking my caloric intake and half-heartedly restricting calories. Sparkpeople.com recommended for my weight and height that I aim for 1600-1900 calories a day, and I went with that.

I weigh 200 pounds now.
I had never been more than 19....3ish... 5ish... it's not a very accurate scale.
But I'm 200 now.

People have been telling me I look good, I look thinner.
I'm not; my size 14s don't fit me. Which means I'm back in the not-misses'-size, not-plus-size ghetto where I was before I started waitressing and skating.
I've got much more toned upper arms than ever, and my thighs are like rocks, but muscle is heavier than fat.

I now have a BMI of 31.3. Anything over 30 is considered "obese". When I had that run in with the doctor last year who yelled at me to lose weight and told me I was "dangerously obese", I had a BMI of 29. Which is Overweight.

(Did I blog on here that I found out that the knee pain that sent me to her office in the first place was patellar tendonitis caused by improper arch support making my feet pronated so the knees weren't bending properly but had too much lateral pressure? Which is, by the way, entirely unrelated to my weight? Not that she even connected the knee pain with the weight, it's just that the weight is the only thing she saw fit to discuss with me. I've a feeling that if I'd come in bleeding to death she'd still have lectured me about my weight, as if it were relevant.)

Anyway. I just wrote a huge rant on my Livejournal about how I am not ashamed of my fat titties and fuck you if you are (ashamed for me, that is). (http://dragonlady7.livejournal.com/981187.html)

I really do think I should at least do some pinup modeling.
If I could dance I would do performance art.

But I'm tired of feeling ashamed that I don't feel as bad as I ought to about the fact that I'm a fucking fatass.

So... if anyone's ever wanted to practice their portrait/pinup photography skills, I am a willing model. Let's make art.

And then sell it to porn sites because hell, I need money. I have a lesbian shotgun wedding to attend in Europe this spring and I don't have the dough for it.

How often do you get to go to a lesbian shotgun wedding???


p.s. I never shared my roller derby team photos here!




There I am! Clinically obese.