A series of jokes were sent to me today that ended with the following :

"Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are beautiful."

I think that's more true than funny, actually.  There's a definite double standard running around about how men are seen and see themselves and how women do.  I'm not really going to get into the big issue that there is, because everyone knows that it IS an issue.  To a certain extent it's media imposed.  The rest of it is how we allow ourselves to be treated.  What we take to heart, what we dont, what we've accepted as standards of beauty, which are only now beginning to take tiny baby steps towards change.  When I go to the gym, practically all I can see in myself is failure.  I am there because I LIKE going (well, not this week.)  I like how I feel when I'm done.  I like knowing that I've done something positive for myself, my heart, my well-being.  I find myself, however, constantly sizing up what the women with the 'better bodies' are doing.  How they're working out.  In what ways their technique is flawed.  It's all jealousy, really.  I realize that if I began eating 1000 calories a day and spent every waking moment at the gym and had a few ribs removed, I will never be a thin woman.  My mother is built like her mother, who's built like her mother.  We are all wide hipped and small shouldered.  I am taller than my mother, my grandmother is taller than me.  To further confuse things, I have two cousins. (my mother's sister's children) One is a rail thin, hipless, blue eyed blond.  The other a tall, muscular, curvy brunette.  Genetics are a damn funny thing.   I guess my point is, no matter what I did, I would never look like my hipless cousin.  And yet, when you see the three of us together, there's really no doubt we're related.  It's all very subtle:  our inflections of speech (odd, considering they were both raised in the midwest) our hand gestures.  Something in the jawline, the shape of our faces.  What we like or do not like.  Someday I'll post of a picture of the 3 of us together.  I don't have a recent one.  That's something I'll need to work on.  Unfortunately, we don't all see eachother too often.

Getting back onto my topic.  Men, I think are just as bad as women.  I think they're just as critical and certainly just as petty and picky about things, they just display it in different ways.  A man will not say to another man "do I look fat?" or "look at her ass hanging out of that skirt.."  And that's okay.  I have an example to illustrate my point:

There's a postdoc in Dr. X's lab.  I'll call him...Thomas, because that's his name, and I don't really care about protecting him.  Thomas is German with a british accent.  He has a british accent to make you certain of the fact that he's NOT GERMAN.  In fact, he's anything BUT German.  He wants you to know that he was "educated in england", that he has nothing to do with the Berlin wall or Hitler.  He wants to be upper class.  Wants it so bad he can taste it.  Specifically, he wants to be British, upper class, living in New York city.  Thomas is a tall, thin, balding guy, early 30's.  He has probably what I would consider to be the most hideous skin I have ever seen.  It's alternately greasy and oily or dry and flaky.  He's prone to the absolute worst breakouts I have ever witnessed on a human being's skin IN MY LIFE:  and I lived through puberty, too.   He gets not just pimples, but carbuncles.  Huge, festering, weeping clusters of pus filled whiteheads.  Red, raw, bloody scratched-looking, infected open sores.  All over his face and neck.  Daily.  I bitched about pimple time in my life over the last few weeks.  If I had what Thomas has, I would NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE.  True.  Anyway.  About the time of the Monica Lewinsky fracas, there was heated debate around the lunchroom table (which I ignore 99 percent of the time by completely avoiding the lunchroom).  Monica's name came up, as it's wont to do.  Thomas comes out with: "she is about the fattest thing I have ever seen, and I can't BELIEVE anyone would ever sleep with her!".   This is my point.  True, Monica isn't thin.  (fyi, observe photo on the bottom of page.)  But in the name of god, has Thomas ever looked in the mirror??  Does he not get what HE looks like?  He's a bald, skinny, pompous, middle aged man.  Who's commenting on the "fattest thing he's ever seen"?  That "fat pig" almost unseated the president, for christ's sake.  She must have been doing something right. (heh.)  I think that a lot of guys don't see themselves.  That no matter what they look or act like they believe that women should want them by the mere virtue of them being a guy.  And that's just not enough.

This was halloween. I was the only woman there with a man and, if I do say so myself was the hit of the party. Big hips and all.

More Musicians I Adore:
I have always wanted to see Leonard Cohen start a fight with Tom Waits.  I want to go drinking with them, either together or separately.  I would love to sit back, totally rocked off my face, and watch Tom insult the women Leonard has slept with.  Then for Leonard to turn and mock Tom's family values.  Then for them to get into a big old rumble with pool sticks and bottles of Jim Beam. I sit there, just grinning this big old shit eating grin, and take photos.  Roll after roll.  And then I break them up.  They discuss the merits of my beauty, the silkiness of my skirt, the color of my hair.  And I am just the queen of all the world.  THAT would rule.  Until that time, I will live with my slight obsession with Leonard. This is the place to learn everything.  The truest spot for fanaticism I've ever seen on the web.  Just let it be known:  If he tours, and I miss it, I will throw myself off a building, because he's not getting any younger and I dont know how many he's got left in him.  Music to slit your wrists by, indeed.  Most lyricists would do well to take a lesson. Plus, damn, he's suave.  Seriously.  Oo..baby.

As you may have been able to determine, there are a few singers I love.  Passionately.  And have loved for years.  Bryan Ferry and Leonard Cohen top the list.  Tom Waits.  David Byrne.  Paolo Conte (who, if you're curious as to what he's like, sounds like Leonard's Italian cousin.)  Bruce Springsteen.

I see no way out of talking about musicians I like, so I'll just end it and move along.
 

Speaking of Thomas:
Okay, so I mentioned how utterly pompous he is.  I didn't have a way to truly display it until this very moment.  I glanced up and over at the computer he was working on, and saw that he was looking at a web page.  Go feast your eyes on this and tell me he's not deserving of a major beat-down.
 
 
New Toy:

Oh, yeah. Got a cam. Doesn't seem to take the greatest pictures, but allows me to indulge in my obsession with taking photographs of myself. Enjoy.

Did you hear about the moms who are suing nintendo over Pokemon? Stop it, please. Just get a grip.

Tomorrow, we're going to a Porsche 914 show up in Nowhere, CT. If we can find the place, it'll be fun.

More Spinal Tap Quotes:
"Artie Fufkin, Polymer Records...hello! Artie Fufkin!!....what's this??ohh..a documentary...hello...I'm Artie Fufkin, Polymer Records.."
(artie fufkin is the Heart Attack Waiting to Happen guy, but only in terms of his persistence.  I've also co-opted "artie fufkin" to mean MY ASS, as in, he can kiss my ARTIE FUFKIN.  It's really much funnier if you've seen the movie. Trust me.)
 

yesterday/home/email me, let me know if you're needing more monkeys/tomorrow