Diet shakes are NOT good christmas presents

Conjecture this is, albeit based on some evidence gleaned from Facebook posts, but I think my sister is giving the family diet shakes for Christmas.

Seriously.

It should be noted, I have not seen her in about two years, not since she melted down on me in a way worthy of Tom Cruise via Charles Manson on the phone and broke, finally, whatever sisterly feeling I had for her. I do know, however, she had a baby about three months and is breastfeeding.

However, being obsessed with her appearance (NB: nose job and boob collection she'd ask me to sift through with her to pick her new ones — 'cause you know, everyone is interested in fake boobs, particularly hers) her first Facebook post after having the baby was how much weight she lost immediately after giving birth. This has been the predominant theme on the posts since that time. Lately, punctuated by references to a diet plan/shakes/someothersilliness called Isagenix which claims — on its website — to make you lose 15 pounds in nine days.

Oh yeah. So, she is breastfeeding (?) and consuming diet shakes. Apparently her husband is doing the whole cleanse, but she is only doing the shakes — so noted to a friend on Facebook who wondered, in a circuitous way, about how healthy that was for the baby and herself.

I get the impression she is selling the stuff.

And today - what news! <---exclamation mark a reference to her own. Apparently she is pounds away from her pre-pregnancy weight and "the gift of health is the best gift to yourself, or your loved ones, this christmas."

How the fuck do I kindly tell her thanks, but no thanks without erupting into a tirade about the idiocy of her life choices?

Women singing like women

Not girls.

Sometimes very apt

So how are you doing with your year-long resurrection project, Cancerian? Have you been taking care of the finishing touches these past few weeks? If not, do so soon. It's high time for you to officially and definitively rise from the dead. Your wandering in the underworld is at an end. Your mourning for broken dreams should be complete. In January, the age of exploration will begin; make sure your reborn spunk is ready for action by then.

Dreamy Trevor

I do not know why it has been so long.

Trevor Nootenboom is the best massage therapist in town. (You may argue, but you're wrong.) Yet, somehow I have not seen him in two years — though, the last year was consumed with being a prednisone hermit, so that is excused.

I saw him for the first time years ago, suffering debilitating pain from the chronic jaw/neck/shoulder issues which have plagued me since seeming birth, often leading me to the nearest RMT with a spot available *now*. I've seen countless RMTs, physiotherapists, acupuncturists, dental professionals, etc. over the years and though some have relieved it somewhat for the moment, none have seemed to really grasp the source of the problem.

This left me convinced it was a pain I was to manage all my life.

So I went to see Trevor initially (dreamy Trevor) merely seeking some relief so I could make it through the day.

His history-taking was involved. He was grounded, pleasant, not overtly handsome but radiating a lovely bonhomie and health which makes him — as I would never dare tell him to his face — completely dreamy. Utterly so. This despite his warning me there could be quite a lot of pain. "Please," I thought, "I've run with ripped knee tendons. Bring it on."

I knew the minute he touched my shoulder he got it; finally, finally, there was someone who could see, feel, the source of my pain. Not only that, but he found things others had not. This may sound odd, he asked early into the treatment, but have you ever raced butterfly?
Why yes, I said, as a kid and a little in high school — until I got my hips and the drag got to be too much. Ah, he said. That explains some of this scar tissue built up. And here, in the rotator cuff. Kayaking? War canoe racing, I said and could feel blood flowing into areas that had probably been blocked for over almost 20 years.

~But the treatment was painful. Very painful. He'd warned me about this — he practices Swedish and ART (Active Release Technique) saying some patients have struck him as involuntary reaction. He'd also told me I probably would not see results that day and it might take more sessions, as he began to slowly strip built up scar tissue.

I swore silently and vowed to not come back unless there was some improvement— immediamente.

And there was. I could feel my shoulder and neck levelling out, settling into a content spot. Three sessions later I had mobility in my shoulder last experienced when I was 15 years old.

So why did I stop going, yet refer friend after friend to him? No idea. After this morning's session, be assured I shan't again.

apologies

from xkcd

Reading: Historical "biography," Hadrian, by Anthony Everitt. Rather good, in its speculation of the man who built that wall. You know, that wall.

Beef and fire

In my burgeoning quest to eat regularly, this evening I am cooking myself a roast. This is made adventurous because my roast is considered wee and there are no recipes out there for 1.5 lb prime ribs — I am afeared the 10 min. high heat cooking shall not be enough. But we shall see.

I am also a bit nervous because a) it is meat and I rarely cook meat ... mayhap leading to the anemia my doctors yells at me about and b) the only times I have been involved in roast cooking have ended disastrously.

I was about 12 years old for the first. My father had a large roast and me, with my cooking prowess firmly established by muffin baking and yet-to-be-supplanted best French toast cooking, offered to cook it with the aid of my two younger siblings.

He acquiesced and my siblings and I, after I had read several cookbooks — we were taught to do our research, decided a garlic-infused roast would be a good idea. So we slit little holes and I cut up some garlic and we slid the garlic in.

But if some garlic is good, more garlic is better. Right?

I do not recall how much garlic we ended up using, however it was enough to make a very large roast completely inedible. So inedible a visiting german shepherd puppy would not eat it.

The second occasion was a birthday feast for moi during a very busy (scandalous!) summer after first year when a bunch of we actor sorts lived together in a stunning house bought by this highly annoying boyfriend of one of us. More on him some other time.

Good friend Sarah was aghast I'd never had roast beef and yorkshire pudding so took it upon herself to cook me one in a un-air conditioned, heat-containing house on a sweltering day at the end of June. Thank god that house had a pool. And we were not averse to drinking loads of wine.

My favourite memory is of wandering into the kitchen, smashed on pink wine, to find the oven engulfed in flames. Seems cooking yorkshire pudding and the required hot oil is best not done after several bottles of wine (et al ...).

Thankfully, I have had previous experience with oven fire [see: future telling of my dad's wife's favourite story about me] so ran outside to get dirt/sand to throw on it. Into the oven.

Oddly enough, the yorkshire puddings were saved and were deeeeeelicious, not at all flavoured by all guests being, by the time dinner was served, very hot and verrrrrry drunk.

Wish I could find a copy of a photo from that night to post. Ah well.

Now, it is time to turn down the very hot oven and not open the door, as per instructions. Egad. What alchemy is occurring in there?

A gendercide against us

Speech, to mark International Women's Day, 2009, by Ayaan Hirsi

As I was preparing for today's speech I called a very good friend who is Jewish and asked him if it was appropriate for me to use the term "holocaust" to portray the worldwide violence against women.
He was startled. But when I read him the figures in a policy paper published by the Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces in March 2004 he said yes, without hesitation.
Between 113 million and 200 million women around the world are demographically "missing. " Every year, between 1.5 and 3 million women and girls lose their lives as a result of gender-based violence or neglect. As the Economist put it last November, "Every two to four years the world looks away from a victim count on the scale of Hitler's Holocaust."
How could this possibly be true? This is a list of some of the factors. 

In countries where the birth of a boy is considered a gift and the birth of a girl a curse from the gods, selective abortion and infanticide eliminate girl babies.
Young girls die disproportionately from neglect, because food and medical attention is given first to brothers, fathers, husbands and sons.
In countries where women are considered the property of men, their fathers, brothers and husbands murder them for choosing their own sexual partners. These are called "honour" killings, though honour has nothing to do with it. Young brides are killed if their fathers do not pay sufficient money to the men who have married them; these are called "dowry deaths", although they are not deaths; they are murders.
The brutal international sex trade in young girls kills uncounted numbers of women.
Domestic violence is a major killer of women in every country on the globe. Women between the ages of 15 and 44 are more likely to be killed or maimed by their male relatives than as a result of cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war — or all of them put together.
So little value is placed on women's health that every year roughly 600,000 women die giving birth. As the Economist pointed out, this is equivalent to the genocide in Rwanda happening every twelve months.
Six thousand small girls undergo genital mutilation every day, according to the United Nations. Many of them die. Others live the rest of their lives in crippling pain.
According to the World Health Organization, one woman out of every five is likely to be a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.
Genocide is about the deliberate extermination of large numbers of people. And this is genocide. These killings are not silent — all the victims scream their suffering. It is not so much that the world doesn't hear them; it is that we fellow human beings choose not to pay attention.
It is much more comfortable for us to ignore these issues, especially when the problems are so widespread and — for many newspaper-readers — so far away. Often, women do this too. We betray our fellows. Too often, we are the first to look away. We may even participate, by favouring our sons and neglecting the care of our daughters. We look askance at other women who are brave enough to try to denounce the harsh reality that women face around the globe.
Take another look at the list of factors above. All the figures are estimates. There are almost never precise numbers in this field; registering violence against women is not a priority in most countries. How many tribunals have been set up to put the perpetrators of these crimes on trial? How many Truth and Reconciliation Commissions have been established? How many memorials around the world remind us to mourn these victims? Are women disposable goods, somehow less than fully human?
As I speak I can hear the usual excuses. "We don't really know whether it's a systematic annihilation." "It's their religion, and many women don't seem to mind belonging to that religion." "You can't attack people's culture." "It's unfortunate for the victims, but in times of war and poverty, people die."
But the world is not becoming more violent — at least, not for men. As the Economist points out, the world is in fact getting measurably more peaceful. The number of wars and civil wars around the globe dropped by 40 per cent between 1992 and 2003. The worst conflicts- those which claim more than 1000 lives - went down by 80 per cent. Between 1991 and 2004, 28 armed conflicts were ignited (or reignited), but 43 of such struggles have been contained or doused.
And poverty, too, has little to do with it. Rich countries persecute women too. In Saudi Arabia, women may not vote; they may not leave their neighbourhoods or their country without the permission of fathers or husbands; they may not work, or choose their spouses, unless their guardians permit it. Women in Saudi Arabia are never adults. They are at best household pets, at worst domestic slaves — but they are never equals. And yet nobody could call Saudi Arabia poor —except in cultural terms.
We face three great challenges.
First, we women are not organised or united in any way. Women in rich countries, who have attained equality under the law, owe it to ourselves to mobilize to assist our fellows. Only our outrage and our political pressure can lead to change.
Next there are the forces of obscurantism. Take for instance the subject of today's conference here in Cologne. The Islamists are engaged in reviving and spreading a brutal and retrograde body of laws. Wherever the Islamists implement the Quranic Sharia laws, women are hounded from the public arena, denied education and forced into a lifelong of domestic slavery. The struggle to combat Islamism is a struggle to save women's bodies and minds.
Thirdly, cultural and moral relativists sap our sense of moral outrage by defending the position that human rights are a Western invention. Men who abuse women rarely fail to use the vocabulary the relativists have kindly provided them. They claim the right to adhere to an alternative set of values — an "Asian," "African" or "Islamic" approach to human rights. According to this point of view, when husbands, fathers and brothers seek to own us as their property, this is an expression of culture or religion and should be respected.
We must strive to shift this mindset. A culture that carves the genitals of young girls, hobbles their minds and justifies their physical oppression is not equal to a culture that believes women have the same rights as men.
March 8 is Women's Day. Every year on this day we celebrate our accomplishments and condemn our suffering. But one day isn't enough. We need more than a day — more even than a year or a decade. We would need a whole century to fight the ongoing gendercide against us.
Even when they genuinely seek peace and prosperity, the men who are our leaders — for they are, overwhelmingly, men — seldom realise that as long as there is war against women, mankind will never know peace. If we are denied education, we pass our ignorance onto our sons as well as our daughters. Neglecting women stunts the entire society.
When we are raped we conceive in humiliation, and we pass our rage onto our sons. If we are not loved, we cannot love back; and if we are not nurtured, we neglect. Women who are treated with cruelty breed mercenaries and oppressors. If we are destroyed, we destroy too.
I feel just as powerless as you do in the face of this horror, but I know that we will need much more energy and focus if we are to put an end to it now. Three initial steps could be taken by world leaders to make a start at eradicating the mass murder of women.
A tribunal like the court of justice in The Hague should look for the 113 million to 200 million women and girls who are missing. Turning numbers into faces and names will contribute greatly to the eradication of violence.
A serious, international effort must urgently be made to register precisely violence against girls and women, country by country, and expose the reality of their intolerable suffering.
In the past two centuries those in the West have gradually changed the way they treat women. As a result, the West enjoys greater peace and progress. It is my hope that the third world will embark on this effort in the century that lies before us. Just as we put an end to slavery, we must end the gendercide.
Finally, we need a worldwide campaign against the cultures which permit this kind of crime. Cultures which endorse the physical elimination of girl babies, which do not feed and care for them, which deny women their rights over their own bodies and fail to protect them in any way from the worst kind of physical abuse - these cultures need to reform. They are not respectable members of the community of nations.
Today, on International Women's day let's name them and shame them.

— Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Blooming

A third of the way through Watching The Brothers Bloom and am bewildered why I've never heard of this movie.

Staring two of the most talented and lovely-to-gaze-upon stars of our time (Adrien Brody and Rachel Weisz), it appears a whimsical, comic-book-via-Tank-Girl-esque, through-classic-Film Noire flick.

I adore it already, particularly after Brody withered some wannabe TV starlet's attempt at a come on, deftly making some truly putrid lines seem less so, and Weisz made an almost hysterically weird arousal scene on a train seem beautiful. Skill. And great costumes. Yum.