Well, Hells Bells, I Am Well

All of my panicking about my physical exam on Tuesday, at least as far as I have been examined, was for naught!

I was, of course, nervous, because I am nothing if not certain that I will be pronounced dead on arrival as soon as I come into contact with a general practitioner, a dentist, or an optometrist, so I kept myself busy while I waited for the doctor by taking pictures of myself:



and tweeting:



because nothing says dedication to social media like fully documenting your life from an exam room table. I think I may have flirted with Queen of Spain about my impending pap smear.

It turns out that my chest X-ray came back clear — HOORAY! — and my bloodwork came back fabulous — AMAZING! — and my breasts are magnificent — OF COURSE THEY ARE!

Okay, so Dr. N didn't tell me that my breasts were magnificent, but they are, and we both know it, so I thought it was fairly safe to throw that in there.

I have to go for a second set of blood tests yet, because the phlebotomy people missed out on checking for my iron and B12 levels, but neither of those things are very likely to result in my sudden death, so I am feeling pretty good.

Thank you all for your messages of love. Seriously. There is no reason on earth for my cholesterol to be anything but atrocious, so I hold you all personally responsible for my shockingly healthy blood pressure and cholesterol levels. You should hire yourselves out as remote healers or something.

And then something something something, something something. And something else.

I had thoughts that were supposed to go there where all those somethings are, but they ran away on me, and now I have to go shower and get ready to sell shoes, so I have no time to chase them. As per usual, though, I will no doubt have some terrific ideas while I'm shampooing my hair, which ideas will also run away, because my thoughts obviously hate fame and riches. Jerks.

Booby Girls, The Need To Consume, And Links Aplenty

Here is a great gallery of pictures chronicling scenes in San Francisco during the recent rush of same-sex marriages entitled “Justly Married”.

Stem cells may offer us the hope of bigger boobs. Whoopee.

Not that I trust studies such as this one so much, but I am having problems with evil women in my life lately. Maybe they're just incredibly fertile.

Einstein’s “cosmological constant”, or dark energy theory, may actually hold up according to recent measurements.

Last night, I was out with the Fiery One and Friday Films to a local restaurant/bar. We had gone to a film at the indie theatre, and the thought of going to the same pub again that we always go to was depressing, so we ended up at this restaurant/bar we don't usually go to. It was a welcome change. The cold weather and lack of a vehicle has limited the distance I am willing to travel when I leave the apartment, but it is finally warming up enough to increase my radius. The three of us had to jam ourselves in around a tiny table, because the place was packed, and when our food arrived it got a little tight, but it helped with the coziness factor. I was seated at the end of a row of tables, so I had a view of everyone sitting down the line. I am an avid people watcher, and there was definitely a watchable group of girls just down from us. There were three of them: Almost Pretty, Getting Dumpy, and Decidedly Homely. They were an awful lot. They were terribly fascinated with the fact that they had boobs, and that they could be hoisted and squeezed together to entice males. As much as your average male is into the whole boob thing, especially boobs of good size such as these three had, the male half of the crowd at the restaurant were having none of them. On the other side of these three was a table comprised of two male-female couples who were of the glossy and styled variety. The two women left to go to the bathroom, leaving the two men alone at the table. Within ten seconds, Almost Pretty had re-glossed her already gloss-laden lips and was leaning her breasts against one of the men’s arms. He kept his head turned in the other direction, obviously trying to avoid the overdone and unashamed advances of the girl, but then she reached her arm across his chest, pressing it firmly to him as she did so. I’m not sure what she was doing, but she seemed to try to engage him with a question. He brushed her off with a really short answer and was saved by the return of his tablemates. The three girls kept desperately trying to draw attention to their breasts, which were less impressive than the average rack, by pointing out certain aspects of their bras and touching their breasts to indicate how they fit. When no one approached their table with any interest, Getting Dumpy and Decidedly Homely tried to insinuate lesbianism into their display, alternately hugging each other, pointing out each other’s boobs, and looking deeply at each other. Ick. Almost Pretty was missing out on the lesbo act, so she tried her best to oh-so-seductively apply lipgloss while staring intensely at me and doing that weird porn star thing with her mouth. They finally gave up after a guy came by their table to say hello and Almost Pretty stood up unnecessarily so that she could press her breasts against whatever part of him was available for boob pressing. He was obviously uncomfortable and made his getaway. I have never seen such a bizarre and desperate display as that outside of the cougar set, and I do hope that I am not made privy to it again. They were an embarrassment to women everywhere.

There is yet another thing that may possibly lead to breast cancer. What doesn't now?

Check out these great posters from a recent era in Chinese history. (To read the slogans in english, hover your pointer over the image).

How great is it to come from one of the fattest provinces in the country? So great.

Despite the fact that he failed painfully during the first round of auditions for “American Idol”, William Hung received a recording contract for $25,000 US before the competition has even finished. If you don’t remember him or didn’t get a chance to witness his talents the first time around, watch the video of his audition.

I had this idea a few days ago, and I thought I would share it with you. I have been thinking lately about the impending oil crisis and why the United States seems bent on using more and more disposable, one-time use items and selling huge polluting vehicles, which only increases the mass amounts of oil that are already being consumed. Here’s my idea: the United States has to continue to consume oil as they have in the past, and in fact, they have to continually consume more and more, in order to maintain their buying power in the world oil markets. So, the less oil they consume, the less clout they have politically. They have to consume more and more oil just to keep up with themselves and maintain their international status. Just a thought.

Conrad Black claims that he is trying to retrieve his reputation. He obviously doesn’t know what people thought of him even before this scandal.

Jerry Falwell is the latest member of the clergy to decide to devote himself full-time to fighting gay marriage by forming an anti-gay marriage coalition. It is none of the church’s business what a secular government decides!

Arnold Schwarzenegger says that courts in San Francisco are “dropping the ball” by allowing the granting of marriage licenses to gay couples, but a California judge will not be pressured.

Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, has turned 80, and he has assured the people that he will retire within the next five years. Why do bad people get to live so long?

I had Friday off, so I am in the middle of a three-day weekend. Did I ever need this long weekend what with work stress and it being the tail end of a hellish winter. I thought that I should use my extra time off constructively, which it turns out, is good for all of you. I have added an extra links page! Its links are mostly ones that I already have on this main page, but there are a few extras, and these will be added to whenever I come across links I would like to keep. So check it out. (I’ve added a couple of really good smut links if you are into that kind of thing).

I get so steamed when I hear that women, in this day and age, are still not allowed to go somewhere simply because of their sex. At least this golf club in Ireland has been forced to change its anti-women rules.

A doctor in Germany, Dr. Mechthild Bach, has been accused of killing as many as 1500 of her patients.

In Nairobi, Kenya, a huge fire has destroyed a vast slum, leaving 4500 people homeless.

I love this architect’s idea of Regina, Saskatchewan’s airport expansion. He wants to embed the art right into the building. Yum.

Wal-Mart is evil for even more reasons, and it’s not good for any of us.

The Red Cross has had a sit-down with Saddam.

The Tenants, January Blues, And Boobs

“Suicide in the Box” is an incredibly depressing look at the effects of solitary confinement on the mentally ill.

Due to my moth-to-the-flame-ishness when it comes to the grisly, the Pickton serial murder case fascinates me. The story is becoming more and more terrible as they uncover DNA from women who were not on their original list of the missing.

I recently finished reading Bernard Malamud’s The Tenants. I feel like I have had several hours of my life stolen from me. It was one of those books where you can see from the outset that you are going to have difficulties with the style, or the characters, or the storyline, but you feel that once you have gotten through the first fifty pages, come hell or high water, you must finish it. Thanks to the powers that be that it was only 212 pages long. The two main characters in the story are a Jewish man Harry Lesser and an African-American man named Willie Spearmint. They are both writers squatting in an old building and trying to finish their manuscripts. Malamud took great pains to make every point he had to make about the difficulty of race relations in the United States painfully obvious. The storyline references it without being too plain, then Lesser has a couple of pages to think about it, and then Lesser and Willie have a confrontation to really drive the point home. If after all that you have still missed it, the whole thing is re-enacted over and over in a rising crescendo of violence until the last page, which is nothing but line upon line of the word “mercy” repeated. Oh, but wait, it’s not just about repetition; it’s also about being racist. I called out regularly to the Fiery One in intellectual pain when Malamud would refer to Willie as “the black” for the thousandth time, or when Malamud would describe Willie as having attacked Lesser “savagely” and as having eyes that “popped” from his head. Ouch. So, in closing, I finished it, it was terrible despite the claim on the cover that it is “a remarkable work of art”, and you should avoid it. Save what time you have to live for better things.

Marriages performed civilly outside the church are a legal matter, not religious, so what is the big deal if homosexuals want to enter into the same kind of legally binding union that is afforded heteros? Congrats, Quebec, on joining in with Ontario and British Columbia to fight for our secular rights!

And while I am on the subject of accepting homosexuality culturally, here are the Canadian and world same-sex rights timelines.

That’s it, Mr. Bush. Antagonize a country that we know has nuclear weapons.

This winter weather is really starting to get to me. I lean heavily toward the Seasonal-Affective-Disorder type of depression, and -40 degrees Celsius, which keeps me caged in this little apartment, does not help the situation. With nothing much else to do but finish the evilness known as The Tenants and nurse frostbite, I started thinking about the hollow spot left by depression and the ways in which we all try to fill it up. I don’t always recognize the depression, but I recognize the urge to fill up the hole. I fill this hole with books, beer, a new hair colour, cigarettes, trips to my hometown, movies, blogging, planning new projects that will remain unfinished, eating too much, avoiding food, television, buying new sweaters. Nothing fills the fucking hole. The only thing that can fill the hole is what makes the hole, and that is the changing of the season. It will happen. I know it, you know, we all know it, but the ass end of January makes it feel like this is the only way things are ever going to be.
I just read over that last paragraph. That sounds ghastly. I would like to assure you all that I am less an unending-deep-pit-of-despair type and more a mood-swings-both-up-and-down type. My wrists are not being slit as we speak, I am all out of rope, and I have misplaced that old bottle of Xanax, so don’t worry about me. I have things to look forward to. I have pictures to take, I have to go see the movie “Sylvia” tonight and have a drink with friends whom I love but rarely see, I have to nag the Fiery One into installing Photoshop, I have to commune with the rabbit otherwise known as Gordon, I have to dye my hair to a rich shade of dark brown, and I have to rustle up some cold medication to beat back the snot that is settling inside my head. I know that some of those things are on my list of things I use to fill up the hole, but they are also great diversions from the ass-end-of-January blues. It’s the 31st of January anyway, so today it ends, and tomorrow February begins, which is also an evil month, but it is oh so much closer to March, which is not entirely without its humanity.

I have a couple of questions regarding this Libya thing: what does the United States do with the nuclear weapons materials that are handed over to them? and, do we really want a world in which it is okay only for the United States to have all the materials for making nuclear weapons and no one else?

A harsh play about honour killings in Turkey is helping to educate the public there and hopefully effect some change.

It’s January, so the annual Bloggies are in full swing.

Read this blog about the 2004 United States presidential campaign coverage from the Columbia Journalism Review. It's got what you're looking for.

Ever wanted to confess something but had no one you could confess it to? Do it at group hug.

This is too much fun. Go to this site, hit the "use it" button, and paste in whatever text you want. It will decode it to reveal hidden messages. The section about my one-on-one meeting from my last entry revealed this message: the plan is ready we can go.

Aw, a baby dragon. How cute!

Fat is (or is becoming was) where it’s at for women in Mauritania.

I am honestly fresh out of things to write about. I could go on with a “Facts and Links” section, but I don’t think I’m in the mood for that. Oh, wait, maybe I am. I have just hit on an idea. Now bear with me:

Non-pornographic Boobs Facts and Links (these links are in bad taste and may still be inappropriate for work):
* In the past at Give Boobs, you were given the opportunity to help a college girl get breast implants. She has since achieved her goal, but the site is still kind of fun (in that silly, people are sad kind of way).
* You have all probably seen this already, but it’s worth a revisit to see how well you can tell the difference between Moobs or Boobs. I’m terrible at it.
* This is not exactly serious, but check out the history of boobs.
* Whoose Boobs – “America’s Number One Quiz Show”. (Warning: this site has audio).
* This blog is dedicated to news and stories about breast implants.
* “Boobs: An Owner’s Manual".
* British model, Jordan, seems to be having a difficult time in the jungle with her boobs.
* The use of silicone implants dates back to 1963.
* For some good boob facts, go here.
* Google is trying very hard to get Booble.com to cease and desist.