Addiction: the new beauty must-have?

Been reading biographies of famous stylistas lately. Empress Eugenie (oh, just go Wikipedia it already), Marlene Dietrich, Jackie Kennedy, Wallis Spencer, Elinor Glyn: drooling spendaholics, every one. Carine Roitfeld, the gut-wrenchingly chic editor-in-chef of French Vogue? Takes Lexomyl (a tranquilizer) every day to stay calm. Diana Vreeland, the eccentricly fabulous editor-in-chief of American Vogue in the 50s and 60s? Doffed two slugs of scotch each morning to brace herself for the day ahead. Anna Wintour, present e-i-c of same publication? Feasts nightly on the still-living flesh of in-utero lambs, if you believe the hype.

Lindsay Lohan, Kate Moss, the list of fabulous women of style who ALLEGEDLY get shit-faced daily goes on and on.

Question: is there a link here somewhere? Does addiction and/or regular consumption of narcotics have some kind of causal correlation to style and success? Is booze the new Botox? Is heavy-liddedness the new eye-lift? Is unconsciousness the new fountain of youth? Yes please.

What is it that links sartorialism, success, and smashed-facedness?

S.O.S: September edition of Vogue has fallen on me....Send help. Pinned somewhere around page 244....

...This will be a short post. After several hours of endless flipping, I've reached page 244 of the Vogue Fall Fashion EXTRAVAGANZA (yes, broke down and bought Vogue despite earlier rantings against it. For God's sake, Kirsten Dunst is on the cover as Marie Antoinette...two of my favourite fashionistas in one...so cut me some slack.)

Ow. That's about all I can type. My right hand is completely cramped from page turning. My mind is reeling with the combined pressure of approximately 237 advertising images. I think there was an article in there somewhere, but I'm not sure...Make the skinny models stop staring disdainfully into my over-fed soul. They will haunt my dreams forever.

And please, somebody help me find the article on DRAMATIC NEW SILHOUETTES. I must decode fashion's fresh shapes immediately or I may die...

Since muthaf*&^ing IS the new wazzaaaaahhhp...

(Writing about other blogs' cleverness = not having to be clever myself. I think I'm on to something...)

Time to give my new blogger friends some love. Check out 'friends' additions to the right. No, not down there. Up there. Yes, that's right.

If you enjoyed Samuel L. Jackson's recent addition to the cultural lexicon, as presented in film's greatest achievement to date, [Muthaf&^%ing] Snakes on a [Muthaf&^%ing] Plane, then you will adore one of my new favourite blogs, Arse End of Ireland. Here there don't be snakes (they were driven hence by old St. Paddy many a year ago), but there sure do be a lot of muthaf&^%in. In word only, cheeky monkeys. Seriously, The Swearing Lady is seriously funny. And a honking good writer. Give her some love ya tossers! (I have no idea what that means, but it sure feels good writing it).

Veering from my Irish Canadian ethnocentricity now, I'd also like to introduce you to American blogger Malnurtured Snay. Again, a most humourous blogger with excellent writing skills who says it like it is, only funnier. And, uh, I think he's just kidding about the guns. I'd also like to point out he's the first person I've ever come across who had exactly the same reaction I did to Anne Proulx's writing style (choppy indeed) in The Shipping News.

If you ever need to know anything about the many other uses of Cadbury Cream Eggs, the best way to smear protein on your face (passing out in a plate of cheese nachos), or filtering smog with enzymes, you must check out my new Canadian blog acquaintance, Molecular Turtle. He's taking the, er, "mistry" out of "chemistry," one blog post at a time. (Sorry...it was the best I could come up with.)

Check out the other wonderful old friends as well. There's lots of humour and great writing to go around on ye olde Internet. I'll add new friends as I find 'em.

And check out my band's blog when ya get a minute. These songs are golden oldies...but we're coming out with a new album next month. Also, mine's the blue-clad butt in the canoe. And I'm also the girl in the red dress (No, not up there. Down there. Farther. Yes, there I am.)

Bwahahahahaha...

Found this link on Gawker.

BWAhahahahahahahaaaa....ohhh...mmmmy....gggawd....
hahahahahahahaha...rrrrride your way ttto...fffittness...

....ha! hahahahahaha!!!

Oh, man. Laughter is the BEST workout.

p.s. Don't forget to watch the video--you've got to 'see the iGallop in action'!!!!! You've simply GOT to.

Mars, stars taken down a peg

In my calendar for August 27, 2006 you will find the following entry:

MARS day!!!!

Four exclamation marks. Four. That's how excited I was when I wrote it. I'm a big fan of outer space and physics and particles and planets. I think they're all good ideas; we should keep them around. So when I heard that Mars was going to come close to Earth on August 27--so close, in fact, that it would "appear to be the same size as the moon"--I nearly choked on my coffee and toast in excitement.

And then this morning, I'm getting ready to write a post informing both of my readers about the big Mars event. And I do a little extra digging online--trying to find information about it on, say, Discovery.com--and I discover that it's all a hoax. A pox upon the twit responsible for this hideous deception.

I was depressed about Mars' no-show until I read this. Seems that Hollywood is taking uber-divas like Cruise and Gibson and Lohan down a few notches. Let the car-wreck unfold.

Paramount has bitch-slapped Cruise into a pouty public 'You're fired! You can't fire me, I quit!! You're FIRED!!! No, I QUIT!!!!' match. Heh heh. Ever since the couch-leaping and Brooke-bashing episodes of late '05, I've been waiting for this.

And ABC cancelled a mini-series created by Gibson the Drunken Anti-Semite...on the...snnnnicker...on the...mmmmhhhhahahaha...sorry...I can barely get it out....mmmmmphhhhh....on the Holocaust! Can you believe a man that spewed anti-Jewish comments in a drunken rant had all along been preparing a mini-series on the Holocaust? Oh, Mel...how you amuse me.

And then there's Lindsay Lohan, my favourite fellow redhead (or as we prefer, 'firecrotch') to whom a production company 'wrote a scathing letter' for her diva-like behaviour. A scathing letter? Couldn't they have thought of something a little more ... dramatic and fun for celebrity voyeurs like me? I mean, what's next? Are they gonna take away her clothing allowance for the month? Make her eat her vegetables?

Now please take a few moments to appreciate the artistry of my graphic above. I've named this piece "Cruisiverse."

Have a nice day.

For this I leave the cottage?

Here's the most offensive thing you'll read this week, if you're a woman. Or an enlightened man (tread verrrry carefully, menfolk).

I am supposed to be at the cottage with Husband and Dog right now, but had to come back because there's no such thing as a week off if you work for yourself. And as I was flipping through my various, uh, news sources and reports, I found this article from that deeply feminist, woman-loving magazine, Details.

Reading this particular Pulitzer prospect, I was especially impressed with the 'pig's ass' image they use to graphically represent curvy women. They're praising women with curves, see? But they don't want those curvy ladies to rise too far above their station as man-meat, see? Don't want them to think they deserve stuff like self-respect or they may stop wanting to be oggle-bots and bristle at the thought of being compared to farm chattel, see? So Details wisely portrays these women through the cute image of a pig in glittery heels, see?

When you click on the slide show--and you absolutely MUST click on it to see who Details rates as a pig (pig in the good sense, silly!)--note the little bar at the bottom of your browser screen. The one that tells you what data you're looking at? This lovely little presentation of some of the century's most beautiful women--and Miss Piggy (no, that's not a joke)--is entitled 072006FATTIES.

Fat: it's the new hot. And that's how Details likes its man-meat.

Sniff...our little girl's all grown up...

Big news on the Whyioughtta family front. BIG news.

My sister bought her first dress.

I haven't seen it, and I don't think it's vintage, but it was a dress, dammit--a real goshdarn dress. With a bodice and a skirt and sleeves and everything. Even kind of sheer on top, she said.

The momentousness of this event becomes clearer when you realize that Sister is in her early 30s.

Since the age of twelve, my sister has worn a dress approximately 4 times. These included her own graduation, Halloween (oh wait, no...it was her boyfriend who wore the dress that time), a Vancouver gay pride parade, and my wedding. She bought none of them--all were made or donated.

It's not that she doesn't have style. She does. In fact, she's got great taste and she's very discerning about clothes. Her tastes fall mostly on the goth/punk side, and there's a lot of black, but she has principles and a great eye for fit. She also rarely--almost never--wears makeup. And she's one of those haltingly beautiful people who doesn't need embellishment. But she told me [biting knuckle, fending off tears as I write this] she wore "a little eye makeup" with the new dress. Choke...makes me so proud.

Ever since that summer when she refused to wear anything but tap shoes and a t-shirt that said 'Future Fox,' we've all been a little nervous about what the future held for Sister. But now I can breathe a quiet sigh of relief. Maybe a smidge of my uber-girly influence has sunk in.

Sister is getting married this fall, and we're all headed off to the Dominican Republic for that one. I'm not holding out any hopes for a flowy, beachy white wedding gown--that's not Sister's style. But then again....apparently anything is possible.

Here's to sisters.

Is nothing sacred?

Sighhhhhhhhhh...

I started writing about this vicious attack against Muslims I heard on our local right-wing radio call-in show this morning...you know, in the wake of the London airplane plot. And trust me, I made some brilliant...brill-y-ant...points about tolerance and understanding and the values fundamental to this pluralistic nirvana we call Canada.

But it was all getting too heavy, so I deleted it and went to my happy place: NYT Thursday Styles.

Where I read this.

My happy place let me down. As they say: where's our world going and what's with this handbasket?

What's really bugging us?

The discussion of insects has taken an unexpected turn to bugbears and bugaboos and general broodishness.

When I hit my, ahem, early 30s (which I'm technically still in), my brooding accelerated rapidly. In fact, you might say I spawned quite a brood of bugaboos. I chalked that up to shitty managers and a job I hated and some so-so friends who listed to the far right of true friendship at times. So I decided to make a run for it, become an entrepreneur, and flee to the hills. No more idiot bosses, no more office politics, vastly simplified relationships via the replacement of people with trees and birds and dogs.

Still I brooded. As someone said (I'm too lazy to look it up on Wikipedia right now), "physician, heal thyself." I'm no physician, but the point is obvious: the broodishness lurks within, grasshopper; it doesn't come from ...without.

Enter the happy pills and yesterday's discussion of brooding about my inability to brood. And interesting comments on others' state of brooding.

Here's what I've started to wonder:

1. Is it a biological, evolutionary response to not yet having offspring on which to thrust the obsessive concerns that (barely) plague my (pretty easy) life?
2. Is it that ageing's just too damn depressing and we're really meant to die off around this age?
3. Is it just a phase in normal adult development?
4. Is it something going on out there in 'society' that makes us feel like if we're not rich and/or famous at this age, we're unfulfilled?
5. Is it indigestion and achy joints? (Seriously.)

I wonder lots of other things about this, but I'll stop there.

It eventually leads back to the bugs

I recently started ingesting what I like to call 'my happy pills.' No, I'm not being medicated for OCD, bipolar disorder, depression, or any of the other (numerous) illnesses that plague me every time I visit WebMD.com. They're vitamins. Or rather, they're omega-3 joy pills.

See, if you're prone to Celtic broodiness, which happens to course through my Irish blood like a death-barge down the river Shannon, sometimes your happy hormones need to be coaxed from their frustrated ruminations about the toxins being poured into China's Chiang-Liang river. Apparently, all it takes to stimulate these happy hormones is fish juice. Packaged in large yellow celluloid cartridges that could choke a horse.

So, I've been forcing two of these torpedoes of happiness down my gullet every day for about a week now, and I've gotta say--the placebo effect has kicked in sooner than anticipated. In fact, I hardly brooded at all this weekend. Well, maybe just a little when we were doing some final mix adjustments on our album. But I reserve the right to brood about my art--sorry, my Art. (If you're gonna be pretentious, why not go all the way?)

The only thing I worry about is this: once the brooding's gone, what will be left to fill the vacuous caverns of my mind? Just this morning, I found myself questioning strange little details about my life, like "why do I keep buying olives when there are already four jars in the fridge?" and "why do I refuse to throw out my old ink-jet cartridges?" and "why did Bruce Willis have to destroy several office towers to save the hostages in Die Hard?" If this keeps up, I will become intensely boring, albeit clutter-free, not to mention terminally unable to suspend disbelief. Am I ready for that kind of life change?

But I read this and realized that nothing's really boring when you approach it with passion. And then I read this and wondered what right I had to demand that fish lose their lives so that I can be happy. And then I realized that I was brooding. And that made me kind of...happy.

Still, I'll restrict my swimming to bathtubs...

Today I saw an insect I've never seen before. It was swimming in a lake in the quarry by my house. Its body was about 3 inches long and maybe an inch and a half wide--roughly the size, shape, and colour of half a Tim Horton's lid. It had pincer thingies on its head. Not like a lobster or a crayfish, but like an earwig (shudder). And four little legs. Which it was using to swim. And a big, long stinger-type thing protruding from its hindquarters.

That an insect in my latitude is so big as to have hindquarters disturbs me.

It was swimming around, I dunno...eating stuff I guess. Once in a while it would dive down into the water and pop back up. I was so intrigued, and disturbed, that it actually distracted me from the gorgeous great blue heron perched on the island in the middle of the lake, which was why I'd wandered down to the lakeside.

As Chico and I continued our tour, I couldn't get that bug out of my head. You have to understand that I've wandered through the Canadian bush almost every day of my life for the last four years--and many, many times throughout my life before I moved up here. And I've never seen a bug that big.

We've had a lot of rain and the quarry's pretty flooded right now--there were minnows swimming down the middle of the dirt road that runs through it. I wondered if the flooding had unleashed some prehistoric yuckodite that would now spawn and eventually consume the Earth with its hideous clacky-pinchy things.

So when I got home, being the naturalist that I am, I turned to the Internet for guidance. I looked up the bug, and guess what--it's a kind of a cool bug, called a 'toe biter.' (Cool, that is, if you look beyond its tendency to "inject poison through a needle-like beak" and then "suck out the tissue fluid of its prey"). But it also navigates by starlight, which is a cool thought that almost makes you forget that "if removed from water they have been known to feign death and eject a fluid from the anus."

Nature never ceases to amaze me.

Scream-of-consciousness

Man, I have got to get this project done or the client's gonna fire me...let's see, where did I put that project file...shit, these files really need to be alphabetized...wait, numbers come before letters, right? ...damn, no--I've got to stop procrastinating and get this project done.... ....

... I wonder if the dog needs to go to the bathroom....poor thing, it's really not fair to make him wait like this. I mean, he's a living being....what if it messes up his digestive system to hold it in like this? ...okay, I'll work on the project for twenty minutes, then we'll go for a walk...

...but first I'll read the Times online...just to get the juices flowing....besides, it's important to stay on top of, uh, developments in the world...also, they update the Styles section on Thursdays...that reminds me, I wonder if Gawker has updated its look book spoof yet...ha ha ha...hilarious...

...oh, right...the project. Okay: seriously. What did the client say she wanted again? ...Where's my notebook? God, this purse is so disorganized...wait, didn't I get an e-mail about how filthy the average purse is....crawling with bacteria...maybe I should go clean it out....

..No! Stop procrastinating! ...Okay...so she wants me to make the Web text punchier...'punchier' ...gawd...how do you make human resources programs sizzle? add porn links? ha. ha ha...that would be hilarious. how to get 'a head' in your job...bwahaahaha...

Stop!...stop procrastinating! ...Right. ...'At Company X, our people are our number one asset...' Phew, what's that smell? I detect the distinct odor of bullshit...'People are our number one asset'...gag...Okay...how about 'Here at Company X, our people are more than just assets...they're investors...' What the hell does that even mean? Delete. ...

...Oh God, I forgot about the dog. Better go for that walk now.

...Shit, it's hot out there. I actually saw people running away from the sun. ...wait, is that a sunburn? On my chest? 50 SPF my ass...

...alright...project...Web...human resources...punchier. I have got to get this done or the client's gonna fire me. ...First I need a coffee though. And maybe some peanut butter toast...

Stairs 2, Me 0--and don't even get me started on the elevator

The stairs are headed for a hat trick.

In a veritable Ironman of clutziness, I have now almost died on my own staircase twice. What do you do when your own house wants you dead?

The first time...well, okay...I guess I did have a little something to do with it. I was trying to transport a rolled-up rug twice my height and body weight. Just as I was coming around the rather dangerous corner at the top of the staircase, the stairs magically transformed themselves into a slide and I found myself falling backwards in a kind of olympic back-dive move. I distinctly remember thinking 'Oh. So this is how I die.' But by some miracle, the rug rolled under me and I slid, bobsled-like, down to the safety of the first floor.

Today, in an exciting new riff on falling, I fell up the stairs. Carrying a large mug of steaming coffee and a plate of peanut butter toast. Again, the instigator was my own feet (scheming bastards). But once again, the stairs seized on the moment to maximize damage to myself and all surrounding surfaces. Did you know toast can bounce? It bounces until it lands face-down on the peanut butter side. And then it cements itself to hardwood and/or paint.

Somehow my right foot got caught in the left leg of my pyjamas. How does that even happen? To make matters more mysterious, I also managed to viciously stub 3 toes of the non-tangled foot at exactly the same time, yet gainst all laws of Murphy, my mug of coffee landed on its base after only spilling about half its contents. How sad is it that I see that as a good omen?

Speaking of Omens
Don't you hate it when people use their blogs to recount their dumb, boring dreams in vivid detail? The only thing worse is hearing their dumb, boring dreams recounted in person, when you can't just click away to a more interesting site.

Yeah...so I had this really strange dream last night. It has to mean something, but I try never to venture too far beneath my materialistic exterior, so damned if I can figure it out.

I, along with my husband and a few people I don't know, got onto an elevator in some kind of office building-slash-amusement park ride. We knew we were headed for the basement and there'd be a surprise when the doors opened down there. Then they gave us a clue: it was some kind of quote written on a piece of paper.

Slam! the elevator door closes. Too late, I realize that I know this quote. It's from the movie The Blair Witch Project (shiver...I glance behind me as I write this...it's still creeping me out). As I screech this fact to the others in the elevator, which is going down down down, picking up speed, god how many floors are there in this building? why is this elevator going so fast??? the elevator starts to morph. The walls shake and two more walls pop out of nowhere. The carriage is now hexagonal. We're pooping bricks at this point, but I remain slightly relieved that we haven't gotten to the basement yet. Then the walls morph again. Now the elevator is octagonal. It's getting bigger and bigger, and more doors are appearing on the new walls.

Somehow I know that it's down to a choice on my part: I can will the elevator to stop and face whatever the basement holds, or let the walls continue multiplying forever. With every new door comes some new potential for terror--or salvation.

Okay, I editorialized that last part a little.

Then I woke up, confused and very happy to see the grinning face of my dog, and to feel the soft ebb-and-flow of my husband's sleeping body next to mine.