Archive for July, 2008

Ice Cream is my Friend.

July 23, 2008 at 5:35 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

(Disclaimer: My last couple of posts have been “Ha ha I’m funny” blogs, at least in my own head. This does not follow the same parameters. I am exploring, after all.)

 

This is my new favorite blog.

I pride myself on being a somewhat socially conscious person. I say “somewhat”, because I try not to trick myself into believing that somehow I’ve got it all figured out. In fact, the more I learn, the more I realize that really, I don’t know a damn thing. But, despite my small pool of knowledge, there are certain issues that I can get fired up about, and stay fired up about for days and weeks on end. Generally, anything having to do with race, sex, gender, sexual-orientation, class, disability, and any other minority status that induces mass discrimination and prejudice really get my goat.

That being said, the idea of Fat Acceptance (FA) and Health At Every Size (HAES) were fairly new concepts to me when I stumbled across Kate Harding’s inspired and hilarious blog. I was instantly hooked. Now, I’m not a fat person. I would describe myself as fairly average, but have been described by others as thin. (To make no mention of some of my weight-obsessed family members, who would describe me as “omg you’re so skinny have you lost weight!?”).

Ok, so I will make mention of them. As a woman raised in the US, I was raised with the same values as every other US raised woman. Among those values, it is clearly stated that “the skinnier the better,” and “if you are not actively losing weight, you are a fat cow”. The older women in my family, raised in the same environment as I, held the same values. Therefore, I was brought up watching these women (and the entire nation) trying everything possible to get their waists down to the all-powerful Size Six. I mean, seriously, the cabbage soup diet?!?  And that’s not even a joke.

As a result of this thin-obsessed culture, it is only natural that, despite my inherently average size, I’ve got issues. I myself have, in the past, dieted to excess, denied my body of precious nutrients, tortured myself with ridiculously un-fun exercise, and on and on. I have done this because it’s what I’ve been taught to do. Femininity and self-worth are intrinsically tied to our body fat percentages and pants sizes, and the only way to undo the damage that has been unapologetically inflicted on us is to get educated and rebel.

And what a sad word that is: rebel. It is a sad word, in this context, because what it means is that in order to love ourselves just the way we are, we must fight, resist, defy, and reject the very society that we are surrounded with at all times. And that, my friends, is not fucking easy.

I like to think that I am, in many ways, moving away from the insane patriarchal idea that skinny=godlike. This is, in part, due to the fact that I really love to eat. Food makes me happy! And since food makes me happy, the idea of restricting and measuring and weighing makes me decidedly unhappy. Most diets do not include ice cream and hoagies and bagel sandwiches and lattes, and these are all things that I am unwilling to give up. But here’s a secret, one that I am ashamed to admit and that I’m not sure I’ve actually spoken aloud before: I feel guilty more often than not, when I “indulge” (please note the sarcasm dripping from that word) in these delicious goodies.

THAT IS TOTALLY AND UTTERLY RIDICULOUS. Here’s the facts: As I have said, I am not a large person. And, quite frankly, even if I was a large person, I still eat a reasonably not-crappy diet most of the time and am fairly active in my day-to-day life. All of these things add up to the fact that if I want to spend my Saturday night eating half a pizza and some Ben and Jerry’s while watching the latest New Release, it’s really not a big deal. And yet, my US Media fed brain tells me that pizza and ice cream = burning in the eternal fire pits of hell.

Unfortunately, I am not alone in this delusion. And fortunately, I am not alone in this delusion. Woman everywhere, in the US and beyond, have to deal with this very same thing. This makes me sad and outraged, and yet, it’s websites like Shapely Prose that give me some serious hope. Here is a group of women who are fat (and average and small), who are actively working toward becoming perfectly okay with whatever shape it is that the Universe saw fit to give them. That’s some serious inspiration right there.

So, despite my insane thought processes surrounding food, I will continue to eat my delicious ice cream, and try to remember, like these amazing women, that the number on the scale does not define me. And, when the subject of the newest lose-thirty-pounds-in-a-day diet plan comes up, I will happily think to myself: “Fuck you, cabbage soup.”

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But I already like my first one!

July 16, 2008 at 10:44 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Here on WordPress, there is a button. One click of this magic little button, and it sends you to a randomly chosen blog inside of the WordPressosphere. Seeing as how there are about a bajillion blogs on WordPress, and more added every day, the possibilities of where you could land are endless. This is my New Favorite Thing. Clickity-click-click-click-click.

There are some remarkably fascinating people out there.

One click dropped me smack dab into the world of Fat Man (this is not his real name, nor is it the name of his blog, although he is a self-admittedly fat man. Obese, even). Among other amazingly bizarre things, Fat Man is a ginormous fan of the online world, Second Life (use extreme caution, my gentle reader, in the clicking of this link). A few simple searches later, and I was engrossed in the world of People Who Love Second Life (capitalized as such because they really are a breed unto themselves).

For those of you who don’t know what Second Life is, well, I really can’t help you.

Ok, ok, I’ll try. But really, I don’t think there are enough words in the dictionary to describe this online anomaly. It’s just too… freakish. Second Life is, in a nutshell, a social networking site on crack. It’s the circus side-show second-cousin of the Godzilla of the social network internet world. It’s like Alice in Wonderland meets Carson Kressley throwing a giant virtual masquarade tea party in the middle of the Japanese Times Square and requiring everyone to smoke a big fat peyote blunt right before they arrive, then stealing their wallets when they get there. It’s like… well you get the idea.

The basic premise is this: you sign up, you create your very own super-avatar, and then you get to meeting people. Oh but it doesn’t end there! In order to really make your supertar really cool, you must buy things for it, like clothes and skin and hair and accessories and stuff. And here’s the kicker: in order to buy things for you supertar, you must buy pretend money. As in, you must use your real money to buy pretend money to buy pretend things for your pretend self. I’ll just go ahead and let you chew on that for a minute.

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The thing is, not only are there people out there who are buying these things with their real money, there are people out there who spend all of their free time creating things for people to buy, and actually making real money off of other people’s pretend/real money. Oh lord I think I’m gonna break my italics on this one. And it’s not just clothing and nail colors, it’s so much more. It’s cars and pets and prostitutes and houses and islands for Bob’s sake. Do you have any idea how much a pretend island costs in the world of Second Life?? Yeah well, I don’t either, but I remember reading about it once and almost passing out. It was in the hundreds. Like, real money hundreds. Like, hundreds of real dollars for a pretend island.

Now, I understand gaming to a certain degree. I myself have gotten quite sucked into the worlds of Mario and Myst in days past. It’s fun, it’s something to do, it keeps your brain active, whatever. You spend forty bucks and get hours of entertainment. And, to give credit where credit is due, the graphics on this particular game are pretty darn nifty. The Second Lifers, however, don’t think of this as a game. Oh no no, don’t you dare tell Fat Man that you think it’s a game, or he might need a triple bypass. This is life to a lot of these people. This is, for many of them, their primary source of communication with other human beings. These hundreds (thousands??) of dollars that people are spending in this bizarre little corner of the online universe is, for them, achieving the same basic outcome I get from spending four bucks on a latte a couple nights a week.

Oh boy. Here’s the deal: I’m pretty sure I could just go on and on and on about this amazingly creepy phenomenon (who knows! Maybe there will be a part 2!). But since I know that you, my amazing and very real readers have things to do other than sit in front of your computers all day and night, I will end it with this, a plea to the White Rabbit Carson Party:

Please, please, please sign up for a pottery class.

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Things on sticks.

July 13, 2008 at 5:50 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , ,

What people love most at art fairs are things on sticks.

It really doesn’t seem to matter what it is – bug on a stick, sun on a stick, flower on a stick, jupiter on a stick, star on a stick, moon on a stick, butterfly on a stick, strange unidentifiable abstract somethingorother on a stick. And, of course, the sticks can be made out of copper, steel, or al-u-min-ium; they can be painted or unpainted; colorful or dull; six feet tall or teeny tiny. Whatever it is on the stick, people will buy it, and they will carry it around for hours on end, looking at the other art and thinking, “Man, that would look so good if it was on a stick.”

My boyfriend’s theory is that people buy this artonastick because they are nostalgic for days past. Between corndogs, popsicles, and lollipops, we as a people have been raised to believe that thingsonsticks are really the best things of all. I mean, seriously people, handles make life easier. The only downfall to things on sticks that I can think of is where to put the damn stick after you’re finished, if you are unfortunate enough not to have an easy access trash receptacle nearby. In that case, thingsonastick become painsintheass. Art, however, requires no clean up, and is therefore the perfect thingonastick.

One theory I have about the mind-boggling obsession with this particular brand of art is this: people are lazy and have too much shit. Buying something on a stick takes care of both of these issues, with the added bonus of instantly making you a Person Who Buys Things At Art Fairs, which you all know you want to be, even if you claim otherwise. Thingsonsticks are easy to buy, easy to carry, easy to transport, and easy to display. They take away the hassle of having to either a) lug around an awkwardly sized and/or shaped piece of art in the sweltering heat, or b) having to walk aaaaall the way back to your parking spot in the middle of nowhere and aaaaall the way back to the fair, hoping that the one-hundred and seventy-two degree heat inside of your car doesn’t ruin whatever it is that you just spent three-hundred and forty-seven hard earned dollars on. AND, once you get it home, you don’t have to move any art on the walls, or try to squish any more knickknacks onto your table. You simply plop it in the ground outside and you’re good to go! No thinking required – it’s like the Perfect American Solution.

My second theory (because the Lazy Shit theory is so god-awful negative, and I am a ridiculously optimistic person) is this: thingsonsticks are pretty. ’Nuff said. This is why, when I am a grown up person and have my own house and yard and garden, I will buy thingsonsticks and display them proudly, in stratigically subtle yet eye-catching locations. And I will not care about the people who think I am lazy and/or excessive and/or pretentious. Because my yard filled with thingsonsticks will look good.

[Small End Note: A dear friend of mine who also blogs left me a comment on my last post. It read: "You’re third blog entry is the most important one, so I’ll be watching for it!" This is my third blog entry, and in it I have written 514 words about things on sticks. I'm not exactly sure what that says about me, but it sure is interesting.]

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Inertia will not get the best of me.

July 11, 2008 at 4:51 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

And here I am again.

Which is quite the amazing feat, considering how prone I am to starting things and then never actually continuing them (See: scrapbooking, purse-making, yoga, etc.). I did, however, take some steps against that today, by not only posting links on my facespaces, but also by actually sending out a text message to a handful of friends and telling them about it. Accountability, people, it works. Here’s the amazing part: I have 25 hits today.  Here’s the more amazing part: they’re not all me!

Yesterday, when I was reading everything I could about blogging, I learned a couple of tips on how to keep those 25 fabulous hits growing. They include, but are by no means limited to: not writing posts that are too short, not writing posts that are too long, making lists, using bolds and italics and underlines, not using too many bolds and italics and underlines, blogging every day, keeping headlines interesting, keeping it simple, not being be too personal, not being too impersonal, being fantastically unique, and of course, the kicker – having a niche.

I do not have a niche.

The other sixteen-thousand tips I feel ok with. I am reasonably sure that I can either incorporate them into my blog, or else simply ignore them all together. This niche thing, though, has been giving me quite a headache. It speaks right to my ultimate blogging fear, which is: “Oh my god oh my god what the hell am I going to write about??”  There are about a zillion options out there, on which a bajillion people are already writing about, of which about six appeal to me, and none of which I would want to write about every single time I post. Hmm.

So, here’s what I have decided: I am, in my fantastically convoluted mind, going to consider this blog nothing more than practice. I am not actually writing, I am only practicing writing. I am not actually blogging, I am only practicing blogging. I am not actually typing for an audience, I am only practicing typing for an audience.

[At this point, were we in a comic book, Captain Obvious would swoop down and smack me on the head. He would point out that yes I am, in fact, writing and blogging and doing it for an audience, right at this very moment. However, in order to ensure that I don't have a heart attack over something like a blog topic for the love of all that is good and holy, I will continue to call it practice. I beseech you, Captain Obvious, please to not attack.]

So, practice practice practice. Practice makes perfect, and all that jazz. And hey, maybe if I keep practicing, I’ll find myself falling naturally into my niche. Probably not, considering again my convoluted mind and the plethora of thoughts that inhabit it. But hey – anything’s possible.

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Hey! I’m blogging!

July 10, 2008 at 6:30 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

“I’ve decided you should start blogging.”

The interesting thing about these six words is not that someone said them to me, but when he said them.

I’ve recently become quite addicted to a friend’s fascinating journey and corresponding blog, and was reading with my usual rapt excitement yesterday morning. Somewhere along the line I thought to myself, “Self,” I thought “you should start a blog,” to which I promptly responded, “yeah right.” Not an unusual conversation to have, as I often come up with brilliant ideas only to have them quickly whisked away by that part of myself that is determined not to let me be brilliant. This blogging idea, however, I managed to keep around for a little while. I have absentmindedly considered blogging in the past, but the thought never got very far. Considering my ongoing struggle to let the writer inside of me out (more on this in the future, hopefully), I started thinking yesterday morning that a little practice in the blogosphere just might not hurt. But then, of course, my anti-brilliance got wind of this and left me with the ever-thought-squashing “yeah right.”

Fast forward a few hours. I am waiting for a friend at a coffee shop and reading a book about a woman’s spiritual journey to find herself. All of a sudden, my phone buzzes. I open it to see a text from my boyfriend, and that text says (you guessed it!), “I’ve decided you should start blogging.” Now, I’m a universe-sends-messages kind of girl. And although I often have my head too far up my own ass to actually hear those messages, this one just seemed too obvious to ignore. Here I am, reading a story filled with divine inspiration about the struggle to follow your inner Truth, and receive a message telling me to do the very thing I was mulling over just hours earlier. If that’s not a telegram straight from the cosmos, then I just don’t know what is.

So, like the good type-A girl that I am, I spent the day today reading about blogging. Oh yes, I read everything I could find. I researched how to make your blog the Best Blog Ever, and which blog site is the Best Blog Site Ever, and how to make yourself the Best Blogger Ever. It was, of course, completely fascinating research (mmm hmmm), from which I learned one thing: my anti-brilliance is one cunning little bastard. I could, if I wanted to, probably spend weeks and weeks reading about blogging and tweaking my private little blog site and reading other people’s blogs, until I got so worn out from all the research that I never wanted to have anything to do with blogging again Ever. If I ignore the initial “yeah right,” there is always another way around it. It seems as though in this particular situation, that way is through never-ending spine-tingling internet research.

So, with a big fat slap-in-the-face to that evil little gremlin inside of me, I said to myself, “Self – why don’t you just write something!”

And here I am.

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