This is not a 'shop....

Tropical storm leaves more than 115 dead in Central America

The ground actually dropped out under a three-story building and a house, and they can't even be viewed from that picture. That hole just seems mind-bogglingly big in the center of a city like that.

A Meditation upon Panty-hose.

My husband asked me a perfectly innocent question earlier this evening:

"Do you have any old pantyhose?"

And I found myself answering, "Of course, I'll give my old hosiery to any cause. They are a torture-device of the patriarchy aimed at 'normalizing' the appearance of women's legs. I categorically reject them and consider the women who support their usage traitors to feminism."

This response shocked me. I had no idea I felt so seriously about pantyhose, but I suppose I do. My husband meant merely to find a cheaper solution for trapping the lint from our washing machine than the chain-mail condoms one ordinarily purchases for such a task. But his innocent question touched a nerve with me regarding pantyhose. Recall, if you will, what they are--

(Remember the Kathleen Turner movie "Peggy Sue Got Married" and how she demonstrated what an innovation pantyhose were? Compared to the garter-belts or whatever--yeah, an innovation.)

A super-thin nylon stocking cunningly arranged as a type of leggings. The sizes are very random, and they really aren't meant, generally, for folks like me--

Curvy folks. I'm a Queen, or something. I stand 5'7" and am in the 200lb area. I'm a big old gal. And I....hate.....stretching out the nylons, rolling the little fuckers up, trying to make the crotch actually ride up to where my crotch is, and then wear these awful things when I know the following will happen--

They will run. Because they always run.

They will try to ride down. And the crotch of my nylons will at some point need to be tastefully rearranged in the ladies' room and sorted back up against my lady-bits. But before I get to the ladies' room, I'll be walking bow-legged a little bit like John Wayne playing King Lear, and looking for a horse, a horse! My Queen-sizedom for a horse!

They will hurt my mid-section--especially if they are the evil control tops--which can't, naturally, control everything. Why does any big girl ever think these are a good idea? They make for the middle-pudge, just sending the fat to roll up at a higher place. Ew. And if you are bottom-curvy, with a bottom-tummy pooch, they cause pink-belly. Itchy, sad, lines of bitter, miserable pink-belly. This is so hurtful and wrong. Instead of making one's bodily "lines" smooth under one's clothing, the control-top pantyhose really just rearranges the lumps and makes the wearer self-conscious and pained. (Sometimes there is a sound like Velcro being separated when one removes one's control-top pantyhose from one's midsection. And no, it doesn't feel good to hear that sound, although it is relief to get that machinery of women-hatred off! Off I say! Sound of triumphant albeit slightly mad laughter, here!)

Anyway, my actual legs in winter look a tiny bit like Roquefort cheese, being white with blue veins shooting throughout, and they are somewhat soft. In summer they are a little better, with a golden tan, and blue veins and a degree of Roquefort cheesiness all the same. But I prefer showing my natural gams, flawed as they are, to ever wearing those nasty nylons ever again. This is my manifesto: I have legs, and I know how to use them. They don't beg, and won't beg or suffer under the unnatural fiber yoke of itchy fabrics designed to hide the alledged imperfections of my walking apparati in future. This I vow.

Product review--Wet n Wild's Natural Blend Pressed Powder

I picked up some of this product the other day because this is the time of year that my skin starts turning another color. In winter, I'm pale, Goth-y, a bit pinkish, but as soon as sun-rays kiss my nekkid flesh, I develop this golden toasty hue. And that means I need new foundation. And Wet n Wild is, well, affordable. It's a good drugstore brand of cosmetic.

But what I wanted to point out was the packaging, which really surprised me with what a neat, recyclable design it has. Most pressed powders are pretty wasteful as far as packaging goes--the powder itself is pressed into a small tin pan that sits in a womb of petroleum-based plastic, destined for a landfill after about three months, which just won't biodegrade. But the Wet n Wild compact is actually made of cardboard, so practically all of the components--the cardboard (recycled paper-based!) compact, the glass mirror, and the tin pan part that the powder sits in, are all separately recyclable. So the powder provides the light coverage I want to banish the "shinies" with (using natural ingredients like mica, corn starch, and kaolin clay) and I don't feel guilty when I finally use it up and toss my compact in the recycle bin.

I totally want other companies to follow this kind of thoughtful design. I'd like to see more all-metal lipstick tubes. I'm not sure if there is anyway to make one of my favorite cosmetic products, the automatic eye-pencil (I hate sharpening!) more eco-friendly. But I'd like to see cosmetic companies try.

I must share these creepy religious toys.

These horrific finds are from The Reformed Buddhist. This one picture especially haunts me:



That totally reminds me of the hallucination of the dead baby from the movie Trainspotting. If that was hanging from the Christmas tree, I'd just be waiting for its creepy little head to spin around, all Regan-esque. No amount of tinsel makes that face okay.

Also this:



would have entirely made me go atheist twenty years earlier if it was in my house when I was a kid.

*Shudder*.

Greetings, etc. This is a blog of totally random stuff.

I ran into a quandary with my other blog: it's where I comment on politics and big news items and atheism and so on, and that means that random goofy stuff that occurs to me, like rants about totally "off-pissing"* human behavior, reviews for awesome stuff like books, movies, products, etc., don't feel like they belong there. But sometimes I really want to post just totally random stuff. Maybe pictures of baby animals. Ugly ceramics. Dirty jokes. Personal observations of a non-serious nature.

This is where I will do that. It's like Strangely Blogged's wacky neighbor that does comic relief and minor story-lines. Also, if I'm feeling cranky, this is the place of the Needed Bile-Vent.


*Oh, and I just have this thing for minting new verbal coinage. If I'm using a word or phrase that isn't familiar to you, well, it might not be familiar to me, yet, either. I might have just cobbled up a fitting conveyance for my actual meaning. It takes some getting used to, but if I'm really stretching, I'll provide a definition. Don't worry, I have a poetic license.