wet, then crisp

just a few days ago i was being drenched and pelted by hard heavy rain. in less than a block, my pants were soaked through and my umbrella threatened numerous times to blow up and away. it sure proved to be a scrappy fighter and it was all i could do to hold on.

today started grey, but the clouds cleared and the sun is favoring us. my deck door is open and i can hear the crisp bits of what had been summer's green skittering across the pavement. i just love that sound. those of you who live without autumn really miss out, and not just about the colors. the sounds and the smells are so different this time of year.

there won't be many more, so i'm off to get some for myself.

how to torture women

all i have read indicates there were no female prisoners at abu ghraib or guantanamo. they didn't have to endure the naked pyramids or waterboarding, which, no, were not really torture, ok, mr. cheney.

however, yesterday i realized the ideal way to do this. make them try on bras. or bathing suits, but having spent yesterday afternoon doing the former, it was quite horrible, i assure you. frustrating, humiliating, maddening.

why, noodle, why?

about a week ago, i realized my jackets were buttoning and zipping unlike they had in forevers. which prompted me to pull out my measuring tape. surely a man would never do this, he'd just be psyched his clothes were looser and take that as sufficient confirmation he was getting thinner. so anyway, i lost 1.5 inches from my back. my bra cups are just as full, so it was only from my back.

shortly after that 2 of my bras decided to come up with broken underwires. it's near impossible to describe the discomfort of walking around, not supported and yet bound and askew. but bras are crazy expensive and i was hoping to postpone purchasing new ones til i had lost more weight. foiled.

instead of going full-on masochist and having a saleswoman measure me (knowing i am not the same size as those very old bras) i hit the net to learn the proper way. for decades, i have worn basically the same style, which manages to give a decent heave up but doesn't look like a granny sack. so armed with the new digits and in the interest of frugality, as well as considering them temporary, i headed for the deep discounters downtown.

i suppose because the little frillies are pretty, but i am always amazed at the tiny tiny bras and why a woman would even bother wearing one if that small-chested. so i make my way to the boulder-holder rack, which is only the beginning of the slow boil since nothing is hanging in proper order with b's, c's and d's all mixed up and the 34's in with the 40's. grrr.

the web claims i am a cup size smaller than i had thought, but i hold them up and think, "no way will that do the job." i take some anyway, along with an assort of of 4 different cup sizes and 3 different back sizes. 10 bras. 100% fail.

next shop. smaller selection, but i paw through. i realize they are insanely cheap, and take 5 into the dressing room. the woman who gives me the plastic number tag is covered up in a burka, but i realize under there, she too knows my distress.

miracle. one fits. i am not a cup size smaller, lol. non-miracle, there is only one other that is the same style and size and it's leopard print, lol. under my winter wardrobe of browns and blacks, i justify it, and know the owner will laugh when he sees it.

no doubt the egyptians were adept at torture, but they missed a grand possibility with just wrapping the bewbies up tightly in muslin strips, i swear.

women, bodies, hate, again...

this model was fired by her long-time employer this past april. for 8 years, since the age of 15, she has done print and runway work for ralph lauren. she was fired for being too fat. she is 5'10" and weighs 120 pounds. the termination letter sent to her agent claimed that because she could no longer fit into the sample clothes, size 2, she was being let go.

heartbroken, she kept mum until she saw this photoshopped image of herself on a board in tokyo. her head is bigger than her goddamn hips. it looks horrible. she also kind of looks like a young brooke shields which is weird since she doesn't. this ad caused quite a bit of interwebs kerfuffle so lauren pulled it with awkward non-apologies and is trying to get it erased from the net. haha! good luck with that, ralph. but what kind of disordered group thinking wants to morph a gorgeous model into looking like an auschwitz survivor with a blow-out? it wasn't just one person that got this image and this ad and its distribution all green lighted, but a team working together in a process.there has been buzz lately about the use and abuse of photoshop, with some editors going so far as to say readers don't want to see how women really look, especially models and celebrities. the nanny state of france is trying to pass a law requiring all photoshopped magazine pix to carry a disclaimer. it would be far less ridiculous for untouched pix to carry a tag, since there are none.

lastly, we'll look at lizzi miller. this was in glamour a few months back. she is 5'11" and weighs 180 pounds. from the looks of things, i'm guessing she's perhaps had a baby. she is a successful "plus-size" model and wears either a 12 or 14. there is no arguing she is a big girl, but i'm sure in person she looks great, i mean, she is amazon tall, ya know? modeling agencies consider anyone over a size 6 to be a plus-size model, even though it's 16 and up in shops.fashion has always been about fantasy and that will not change. nor do i think it should, so i'm not advocating to see fiddle-faddle chomping lard-asses in harpers bazaar. unless a woman was raised by wolves, she knows the chicks in the magazines are genetic freaks and/or starving themselves to death. (actually, a girl raised by wolves would be very slim and lean from all that running and subsistence eating, lol, so maybe that's not the best example...) i also find specious the consideration that these models "make" their audience into anorexics. that's craziness in one's own head and isn't about looking like agyness deyn.

supermodels in my youth (when i was in fact torturing myself with badly disordered eating) were cindy crawford and rachel hunter. they looked healthy, athletic, fit. they had hips and breasts and filled out the swimsuit fantasies of the young men i knew. heroin chic was decades ago and still the ideal is considered to be wraith thin and built like a boy.

americans are getting ever fatter and we all agree that's a bad development. even though this is one of the thinner cities, i still see many people that are of a staggering size. only a couple of my female friends are overweight, yet every single one struggles with both the scale and self-image. even as i get slimmer and am fitting into some long unworn clothes, i torment myself with the scale. if the number blips up by even a pound i scan my memory banks and dissect each caloric molecule for the culprit, and see only a bloated pig in the mirror. "did that chicken leg make my ass look fat in these pants?" 2 weeks ago the owner took me clothes shopping. the scale had ticked up that morning, so i could barely look at myself to see if anything fit and simply refused to try on any slacks. of course, this led to madness anyway since a size small dress was too big and a size 14 would not go over my boobs.

last week, i finally made myself stop weighing and tracking all my food on my excel sheets. it was putting my head in a very bad place, reminding me regularly that the only times in my life i have been fully comfortable and confident in my body was when i was anorexic and bulimic. obsessing about not eating or what i might allow myself to eat after feeling insanely hungry for a set amount of time. the scale has held steady, so i haven't sabotaged myself, but each day i am increasingly anxious that i'm not losing. rationally, i know my body is redistributing itself since those size 6 pants now fit, but that doesn't silence the accuser in my head who will always know i eat too much and am too fat.

liars and thieves

the restaurant industry is rife with both, often combined in the same person. it attracts the unstable, those who struggle with drink, drugs or gambling, so they're often short on dough. there is cash-handling mischief, the potential for credit card fraud and identity theft and simpler stealing of product. this is true on the low end like dishwashers, and also managers.

i know people who have been fired for regularly adjusting their tips upward. i worked in a place where the safe was unbolted from the floor and disappeared, along with over $30k in cash from the weekend's receipts. a 40" plasma tv walked itself down 6 flights of stairs and out the door. large format bottles of expensive wine, like massive 6-liters, went poof. guys i know ran a gift card scam for at least 6 months before getting bounced.

more than once i have been on the short end of a tip pool. one new years' eve, the owner and gm decided to pool all the waitstaff tips and share it with everybody else. including themselves. completely 100% against the law. we knew we would get screwed. we all waited for our envelopes and added up what we had collected. they took 60% of what we made and passed it around. it was 2000, the check averages were staggering, we worked a 12-hour shift and made less than on a dead monday. imagine my joy when that gm's jacket, with his envelope, got stolen in the after-hours party. share my delayed gratification the next year when we all refused to work new years if they pulled the same stunt.

an early, but short, escapade in my career was in a splashy place that turned out to be owned by the mob. guidos in and out, up and down, all day and night. something about the gm rubbed me wrong. besides the capacity my breasts had for hypnotizing him and his staggering misogyny, i mean. one of the soft opening nights a wine salesman pulled his car up front to unload product his company was donating that we were supposed to serve gratis. that gm pulled his car right up behind and loaded all 3 cases right into his own trunk. i was there only a few weeks and this was not the only time i saw him do this.

it's a small town and i have seen this bad penny turn up over and over. servers who have suffered under him and salespeople who have had to deal all know he is a thief. like the sky is blue kind of general consensus.

a few weeks back, i nearly spat my tea reading he is now the OWNER of his own place. which means he has investors. some rich dudes wrote checks to a guy who rarely stayed anywhere more than a few months. in the short bit in the globe, 1/4 of a column, maybe, he said, "it's a scene, man," three times.

he appropriated an iconic name, will have live music every night (a dearth here, admittedly) and hired a chef from a place famous for sticky sweet cocktails and hook-ups -- not food.

because i am not a nice person, imagine my glee at the craptastic reviews this place is getting. the food, the drinks, the service all suck. i am happy he is unlikely to succeed. however, i feel a bit badly for his dupes. then again offering start-up cash to a restaurant is only done with money you plan never to see again. this guy is such a small-time sleaze and yet people were amazed at a silky-smooth op like bernie madoff.

barnum was right.

women hating their bodies, redux

these ladies are british celebrities. one is a former spice girl and the other is that peculiar english phenom of "glamour model".

today's on-line version of the rag, "the daily mail", featured these pix.

commentary? spice girl on the far left is lauded as healthy and curvy (although slammed for wearing a dress she wore to an event 7 years ago), and oh-so-much finer than in her bulimia phase in the other pic. hard to tell with the camera, certainly, but is there maybe a 10-pound difference? at most? even "curvy" you can still clearly see her pelvic bones through her dress.

the other was on a british version of "big brother" and gained some weight on a crap diet of chips and such during filming. paper says she's "fat" now, and not worried about losing the stone she gained. in that yellow dress her fake boobs look big enough to topple that tiny body. i can only think that in-person she must have looked like a stick with basketballs implanted under her pecs. (or over, can't tell from the shot.) she looks curvy and healthy to me, what do i know.

this was the same issue where karl lagerfeld, formerly very fat, decreed nobody wants to see models with curves. that it is "only fat mothers in front of the tv stuffing themselves with chips complaining" the skeletor cat walkers are ugly.

not just kids

a few weeks ago, i discussed a poll of high school kids and my subsequent disgust at their ignorance of basic american history. "no child left behind", indeed.

around that same time, i just couldn't bring myself to write about the whole "birther" nonsense that was swirling around the blogosphere and from the shouting heads on fox news. laugh about it with my friends, sure, and take satisfaction in knowing nobody i know is a real amurrican.

today i stumbled belatedly upon this poll of peeps that gave me yet another face-palm moment, tyvm republicans.

24% know he is absolutely is NOT a real amurrican and 14% were unsure.

10% of the country thinks he was born in indonesia, 7% think he was born in kenya, and 1% think he was born in the philippines.

we are left with 20%.

that does include a portion who do know that obama actually was born in hawaii, however 6% of those people think hawaii is not part of the united states and 4% are unsure. yup, 10% of 'em don't know hawaii is "one of us".

and i suppose just to be funny, the pollsters asked the remaining hold-outs if they though obama might be french, lol. 2/3rds of that 20% were "not sure", but he might be.

62% of the birthers identified as republicans
86% are white.

nope. ain't about race, right?

dumb food

this is an actual product and i saw it for the first time today in a big display cooler at the market. different flavors all filled with buzzy ingredients without which we absolutely will die if we don't get them in a fruity beverage. ginseng, green tea, guarana, pomegranate and acai just to name a few. potassium too so you can skip your steak or your banana.

it's also full of splenda.

now, you're saying, what pisses you off about this, noodle? water is SKINNY. no calories and drinking lots of it keeps you healthy. there is no science supporting ANY of these ingredients, separate or combined, being dissolved in 21st century kool-aid will help you lose weight. however, there is science proving that a diet high in artificial sweeteners does make you crave more sugar. which will make you FAT.

i thought the special k protein water was bad enough (yeah, cuz americans just don'e eat enough meat!) but this is really the shizz. i'm sure there are women who drink it by the gallon. i wonder if they've yet inked a deal for placement in places ladies' gyms like curves?

which is worse? that a product this stoopid is marketed to women or that women are stoopid enough to buy it?

naked at school

do we ever stop having some version of this nightmare? does lance armstrong wake up in a cold sweat having seen himself up on the podium sans cuissard? does madonna gasp in the deep dark thinking she is just too old and the toy she wants to bang says, "uh, no thanks, k, granny"?

before yesterday's interview i dreamt i was at the place and had gone through the paces, i just needed to take a written and timed test. there was mad activity everywhere, like there always is in a busy restaurant and no place quiet to sit. hordes of people, whom i of course did not know, kept badgering me with questions i couldn't answer. i begged to be left alone -- "the test, the test, i'm trying to finish the test, please" -- and that person would go only to be replaced by another in a few seconds. i didn't finish the exam and was met with an acid glare from my potential boss when i woke up barely breathing. i was drained from my brain being in that chaos.

all morning and all the way there, i was jumpy and weirdly nervous. the woman was very down-to-earth and easy to talk to, with lots of dropped hints that she is much like me being over 40, single, living here over the harbor and being a lifer in the industry. it went very well and i will get a call-back, lol.

i just can't help but wonder if this is more of the "i'm a fucking phony" complex that seeps from my subconscious now and again or if everybody from queen elizabeth to justin timberlake sometimes wakes up all freaked out too.