This is amazing and sort of frightening at the same time.


Death Bear

We all have someone or something we would rather just forget. Things fall apart. Love hurts. Dreams die. But when you summon Death Bear to your door, you can rest assured that help has come. At first you may be intimidated by his stature and color (7 feet tall with a hard, black bear head, black jumpsuit, and black boots), but absorbing the memories of others is a dark art, and Death Bear must present himself appropriately for this solemn duty. Death Bear will take things from you that trigger painful memories and stow them away in his cave where they will remain forever allowing you to move on with your life. Give him an ex's clothes, old photos, mementos, letters, etc. Death Bear is here to assist you in your time of tragedy, heartbreak, and loss. Let Death Bear help you, and absorb your pain into his cave.

*Death Bear is a member of Club Animals, a pop-performance art group in New York City founded in 2008. We are best known for the Free Bouncy Rides, Candy Crack Delivery Service, and Bunny Butterfly Kisses.
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
and Sunday, February 14th, 2010
Serving all Brooklyn only
Text 347-XXX-XXXX for an appointment
Free





I think they could have come up with a name a bit less grim-reaperish than DEATH BEAR. Perhaps the BREAKUP MONKEY who flings poo at your ex.

Fast food is rarely good for you, but there are items that aren't so bad. My trainer recommends the grilled chicken sandwich from Chick-Fil-A when I get a craving. No fries of course though. :-( There are also some items out there that are just mind-blowingly bad for you on an epic scale. Here are a few of them:

Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries - 2140 calories.
Taco Bell Chicken Ranch Loaded Taco Salad - 960 calories (most on their entire menu)
Five Guys large french fries - 1464 calories and....71g of fat!!!!
McDonald's Chocolate Triple Thick Shake - 1160 calories and 27g of fat (most on their menu).
Dunkin Donuts Sausage Supreme Omelet and Cheese on Bagel - 690 calories
Applebee's Quesadilla Burger - 1440 calories and 4410mg of sodium, twice the daily allowance.
Burger King Orea Sundae Shake - 980 calories and 21g of saturated fat.

Some of those are no brainers. I was shocked at the level of sodium in that nasty looking Applebee's burger. Mom had one of those the last time we ate out. And now they are saying that most calorie counts provided by restaurants are roughly 18% lower than reality, and the FDA sayd that's ok.

I was a little bad today. I had a grilled chicken sandwich from Wendy's, but instead of a healthy side I got a small bowl of chili. Nothing beats chili when its 19 degrees. Mmmmmmmm. My old boss gave me a recipe for turkey chili I need to try now that I think about it.

Tonight I'll be preparing for SNOW JAM 2010!

I have fallen woefully behind on updating the huddled masses on the status of my weight loss/adventure in muscle torture. Truthfully since early November there has not been much to tell. I slacked up quite a bit to allow myself some much desired carb consumption over the holidays. For the most part I did okay, allowing myself one generously apportioned plate at each of the holiday dinners I attended and found that one plate was more than plenty. My downfall was the desserts. If there is a cookie around I will eat it. During my vacation I even baked a batch of sugar cookies just because I wanted a few spoonfulls of cookie dough, the worlds perfect food. The cookie dough was divine and so were the cookies. I also helped myself to far too many pieces of my grandmother's peanut brittle. Throw in some non-diet sodas and the diet was successfully derailed for the better part of three weeks. The good news...my reinvigorated metabolism handled it all beautifully and I didn't gain any weight. This morning I weighed 215 which is what I weighed the week before Thanksgiving. I didn't make my goal of losing 40 lbs by Christmas. We'll see if I can do it before my birthday in March. I started back at the gym last night after a two-week holiday hiatus. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be.

For Christmas I received some much needed clothing that fits my new body a bit better than the parachutes I've been walking around in since late summer. I've been hesitant to go shopping yet so I am very glad to not have to fold the front of my pants over when I put on a belt.

We had a good holiday/new year's. My time off allowed me to get a little immersed in Twin Peaks again which is evident from my last post. I am currently reading a book called "Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks" which is proving to be very interesting. It brought up some interesting information from Agent Dale Cooper's autobiography that I had forgotten about that when coupled with what happened to him at the end of the series points to what could have been a very interesting third season.

On New Year's Eve we met our friend's Sam & Steve for dinner at South City Kitchen. It is a bit pricey but the food has always been amazing there and this time didn't disappoint. I had the molasses brined pork chop with mashed sweet potatoes and was very pleased. The only snafu was when Steve found some cooked plastic wrap in his mashed potatoes. They offered to give us free desserts which we declined since we had oodles of sweets at the house to consume while we watched Kathy Griffin try to out Anderson Cooper for the New Year. Steve wasn't all that upset about it anyway, but we figured at the very least they would comp his meal. Instead they brought us desserts anyway, the cost of which were equal to the value of Steve's dinner. I was baffled by that. Despite being pretty full we ate all of the banana pudding and chocolate bread pudding they gave us.

Saturday I met my stepmother for lunch at Texas Roadhouse and then headed over to the Hipster Pad for the final Christmas gift exchange of the season. I walked away with Dark City on Blu-Ray and a 45 of Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach". Score! We watched the final two episodes of David Tennant as The Doctor and talked well into the night. I'm back at work now and the next couple of months looks to be very busy with work and California trips and such. I am looking forward the promise of snow this week as well. Look for more regular diet updates again and maybe even a before/after pic soon as well. :-)


One last thing. I stumbled across a site yesterday devoted to the astonishing decay of Detroit, Michigan which has lost half its population over the past few decades. The photos are amazingly sad.



You can view more of these here.

toodles

This week I've been finishing up season two of Twin Peaks. The movie night crowd watched the first 17 episodes earlier this year in place of Doctor Who and I enjoyed the hell out of it. We stopped after Laura's killer was revealed because well, the show sort of falls apart after that. The writers found their stride again late in the season but it was too late.

( cut for those who've never watched and should do so immediately )

And that is because after a month of searching in every TJMaxx, Kohls, Sears, Macys, WalMart, Target, Old Navy, Burlington, Goodwill and Marshalls in a 10 mile radius I had to resort to borrowing a Christmas sweater from my dear old grandmother. This was no ordinary holiday sweater...it was something truly special; a relic from a by-gone era when New Coke was fresh on the market and parachute pants were sexy.

( click the cut to behold the 2009 Holiday Sweater Vest 5000 )

Back up a couple of pounds. Grrr. I am sure this had nothing to do with how I ate in Asheville. (guilty face) I'm fighting a cold too, so I haven't been to the gym much the past couple of weeks.

Some of the better pics (of the 250 we took) at Biltmore House this weekend.

I took advantage of the weather this weekend and drove out to Dallas, Georgia to have lunch with a old friend. We worked together at McDonald's back in the day and I don't think we've seen each other in at least 10 years. We had a nice visit, cut a bit short by an injury her daughter suffered right before I arrived. Hopefully we'll keep in touch more now that she's back in the Atlanta area.

I had hoped to make time to stop in Marietta Square Saturday afternoon and snap some pics of all the Gone With the Wind related festivities but I was running late and had to skip it. I'm told it was all taped for a 70th anniversary special on TCM so I'll make sure to check that out next month. I haven't watched the movie in a few years so another viewing might be in order soon as well. I did get a little dose of local history this weekend. PBS aired the special "The People vs Leo Frank". I knew the basics of this case and curious about the particulars. It was a fascinating story. If you are unfamiliar, I'll summarize behind the cut.

( salacious details follow )

Saturday night I got some Nano work done. Its painful work this time around, but I'm pressing onward despite my doubts about it. Sunday we celebrated my sister's 26th birthday with dinner and cookie cake, then it was home for more writing. I do wish the weather would decide what its going to do. I'm tired of switching back and forth from AC to heat and hauling a jacket around all day.

Toodles. More Nano chapters tonight.

No change this week.

I've lost 30 pounds in 5 months folks! I think that's a milestone. Ten more to go over the next month and a half and I'll be at my goal. I think it is doable, but I won't mind extending the date out  a month if I have to. I am not as concerned about hitting the deadline as I am losing the 40 pounds.  

I really should be asleep but my body clock won't adjust for extreme circumstances. We are having a conference at work this week, something they call Mash Up, where they fly everyone from our satellite offices in for the week and we schmooze and have meetings and so forth. The last time they did this was before I joined the company, and I hear there were games of dodgeball in the parking garage. It was billed as a "team building" exercise but I'm told there were a few Monica Gellers in the crowd and some blood was shed. I hope this year is much less violent. 

So I have meetings from 8:30 until 6 tomorrow and then an event at Dave & Busters that it was "strongly recommended" we attend. I still need to get in at least 3 workouts this week so I'll be at the gym at 5am! Yeah I can't even believe I agreed to that, or that it was my idea in the first place. What was I smoking? Wednesday is another full day of meetings but no gym thankfully. My lower back has been flaring up again as well which is making me cranky. After work we all are attending our 10th anniversary dinner at the Galleria Club where they will announce the winner of the 10th Anniversary T-shirt design contest, which I entered. Grand prize is $250 for me and $250 for my favorite charity, which also happens to be me. ;-)

Other inconveniences include that I'm in that limbo period between switching banks where I have some money in one account, some in another and bills to pay in the meantime. My direct deposit won't switch until the end of this month so I have to juggle accounts and pay things from multiple sources until then. I'll feel better once its done. The more I see about the shit banks are pulling lately the more pleased I am to be leaving them behind for greener pastures. 

Oh, and in the category of colossally cool, you can go to Converse.com and design your own shoes. I've messed around a few times with it and here is my favorite so far.

 I spent the day at the North Georgia Outlets with my peeps Sam and Lori. I was happy to get the walking in after indulging in some eggnog pancakes at the local iHop. They were good but I don't think I'll be eating them again in this lifetime. The Staypuff Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters contained less sugar. 

I didn't get much Christmas shopping done but I did find myself a super deal on some totally rad shoes.

I felt much better today thanks to a good night of sleep last night helped along a bit by Ambien the God of Sleep. Plus it was just a gorgeous day and it was hard not to feel good. After I dropped TIm off at work I grabbed some lunch and did shopping where I found the entire run of the British version of "The Office" for 12$. I also got the new Owl City cd which I am quite enjoying. I got back down to Lenox early so I wandered around for a bit until Tim got off, then we hit Best Buy on the way home. 

I got some writing done last night at Borders and I am about to work on it some more before I turn in. I realize I didn't post yesterday's chapter yet, but I promise its coming. 

Husband and I spent the better part of the evening cleaning off the DVR. We watched the new Wanda Sykes Show which really wasn't very good at all. I give her props for trying to change up the late night talk show format a bit, but it came across as very clunky and disjointed. I am familiar with her comedy so nothing on the show surprised me content wise, but I did think that the "know your asians" segment was a little insensitive. Maybe thats the point. Personally I think you can be funny and relevant and edgy without making fun of someone's race...but I'm not on TV either. I will be curious to see how the show evolves, assuming that Fox doesn't cancel it next week. 

Another show that husband and I have discovered is Chelsea Lately. I've always known about Chelsea Handler but never really understood who she was or what she did. I stumbled across her show one night last week and was just ROFLMAO. I don't pretend to understand her midget Latino assistant but she's pretty damn funny. 

Oh and the health reform bill passed the house! I am very excited about that. Now its 2am and I have a chapter to write. 

Bon soir!

Well I felt like crap on a Triscuit today and wound up taking a sick day. After spending a couple of hours working on the next chapter of the story I'm working on and finding that words just weren't coming easily I lay in bed wide awake until 5am. I called my boss who I knew was on her way to work to let her know that I couldn't make it in and finally dozed off about six. Thankfully Tim wasn't going to work until one so I was able to get a few good hours of sleep. I didn't feel great after but at least I could function. 

I don't feel good at all about what I wrote last night, but its there and I'm not going back to try and fix it. I do see the problems with the story so far and I'm keeping notes for the rewrite. The one good thing that came from my lying awake all night was that I did work out at least some of the problems I think the story has going forward. I guess the problem with starting with no direction is that there isn't a direction until I find it. I went into it thinking the story was about Penny but I'm not sure it is. I'll have to feel it out. I suspect that my brain working overtime on this was at least partially responsible for my insomnia. I certainly hope that this isn't the beginning of the chronic sleeping problems I dealt with a few years ago. 

I had a particularly weak night at the gym. Sometimes I feel like David Banner in there and other times I feel like Pee Wee Herman. Last night was a Pee Wee night. I couldn't lift shit, and fell flat on my face doing half the push ups I normally do. Mike said some nights are like that, and it was all work even if the weight was not what I was normally lifting. It was still frustrating. He is off this weekend so no gym again till 5am on Tuesday. I have a conference at work next week and its throwing off my whole schedule. 

Tonight I invited my grandparents over for coffee and danish. When old people come there should always be danish. My grandparents are of the sort that they feel they have to be invited before they will visit, even though they live two tenths of a mile away. I think they had fun. 

Tim gets off in a couple of hours. I think I'll pack up the laptop and park my ass at the Lenox Border's again to work on tonight's chapter. I think I'll skip the vanilla latte tonight though, or at least make it decaf.

Something good did happen today though, aside from the nice visit with my elders. I got a $100 check from a settlement from a class action suit with the finance company that handled my 401K at GE years ago. I'll be spending it on new clothes when I hit the North Georgia Premium Outlets on Sunday. 

  

I've just discovered that there is some business going around about posting every day in November. What is it about this month that inspires creativity? Is it the anticipation of excessing amounts of tryptophan? It certainly isn't football. Anyway, I've been in a blogging mood lately so I'll try and keep up.

Tim was very sick this past weekend so we didn't get a lot done. He slept from the time we got home Friday evening until he had to go into work on Saturday afternoon. They were short handed and "required" him to come in for the final three hours of his shift to help close. I told him to give Swine Flu to all of them. I would be so happy if he could get out of the retail world and into a job with a real schedule for a change. It sucks having all this time off during the holidays and not getting to spend any of it with him.

He bowed out of our annual scary movie night on Saturday too, which I expected. It was still a bummer. We had a big crowd this year and the movie sucked as badly as we could have hoped. This years selection was the 1959 Roger Corman classic The Wasp Woman. Typical of low budget sci-fi movies from this era we didn't actually get a glimpse of Wasp Woman until the final few minutes of the film. The 45 minutes leading up to the big reveal were essentially an episode of "Mad Men" focusing entirely on the goings-on of a cosmetics company run by a very severe and dowdy Susan Cabot. In her youth, Starlin had not only acted as CEO of the company but was also the face of the product. It was mentioned that the idea of a woman not only running a corporation in 1959 but one that she founded in 1939 were slim to none, but thus is the magic of film. Women's lib aside, the cast was littered with a grab bag of cliche 50s stereotypes. The receptionist was played by a Jane Russell impersonator who tried desperately to run away with every scene she was in and was never seen without a nail file or with any work to do. Cabot's second in command roamed the office smoking a pipe and generally being disagreeable with the idea of a woman in charge. He kept the pipe in his coat pocket and somehow managed to never set himself on fire. Finally we had the wacky old scientist who talked to the wasps and seemed to be about four steps away from a nursing home at any given moment.. It was a real recipe for excitement.

The basic plot is that the old man discovers that enzymes from the royal jelly of the queen wasp reverses the aging process. He proves this by turning dogs into puppies and so forth. Realizing the money he could make selling this to women he writes a letter to Janice Starlin, the CEO of Starlin Cosmetics (to be read with a breathy Marilyn Monroe voice). Starlin, who founded the company while she was a young and supple lass of only twenty has been looking for a way to reverse their dwindling sales figures which her staff is quick to point out coincides precisely with Janice's aging face. She hires the good doctor and sets him up in a lab. After some testing on gerbils (that are apparently aged rats) he starts giving the injections to Janice. Within weeks she looks like a teenager again, sparking jealousy among the other gals in the office and lust among the men folk.

As we know, women are an impatient gender and the royal jelly of the queen wasp just wasn't working fast enough. Janice wanted to look twelve again! NOW! She started sneaking into the lab and injecting entire bottles of the stuff into her arm. Instead of reverting her back to her diaper wearing days it caused her to  randomly transform into...WASP WOMAN!

 

This "transformation" took place instantaneously and did not mess up her outfit at all. Once she became WASP WOMAN! she was overcome with an incorageable bloodlust. Once her thirst was quenched, she turned back into Janice complete with perfect hair and makeup and nary a stray antenna on her blouse. Before her reign of terror ends she kills half the office, including pipe smoking man who got his comeupance for being a nosy Nancy and overweight gun-toting janitor. In the end, her slightly less beautiful but vastly more intelligent assistant (played very subtly by Barboura Morris of Sorority Girl fame) puts the pieces together and with the help of the handsome and seemingly useless Anthony Eisley they send poor misunderstood Janice sailing out the 50th floor window.

It was great fun. The version we watched was given the MST3K treament as part of something called Cinematic Titanic. I'll admit it was a tad distracting since there were 5 commenators all silhouetted on the screen. There comments were golden though. Check out the trailer below if you dare.

I decided keeping a separate LJ for NaNoWriMo is silly and too much unnecessary work. I'll start posting the chapters here this evening. Comment if you want to be on the filter.

I had a few moments today where I panicked about going into this with no plot whatsoever, but as Nanowrimo founder Chris Baty says..."No Plot, No Problem!". All I allowed myself this year was a name and a problem. Penny has the key to a safety deposit box and she has no idea what is in it. I didn't even know myself until 8pm this evening when she opened it while I sipped a vanilla latte at Borders. I wasn't even sure where she got the key. What it turned out to be surprised me as much as it did her I think. Yeah, I like to talk about her like she's real. It helps the muse do its' work I think.

Penny also isn't as saucy as I imagined her to be. She's actually sort of sad and needy. That will probably change. A story isn't really a story unless the protagonist evolves. We'll see though. This is only chapter one after all.

I'm off to get a head start on tomorrows word quota before bed. Best to stay ahead of the game while the ideas are still flowing.

Its practically November and you know what that means. Insane people all across the globe will embark on another NaNoWriMo and I will be joining them. Typically at this point in the game I would already have some thread of an idea for a story. In years past I've spent weeks outlining and brainstorming so that I could get off to a good start and hopefully finish the darn thing for once. Well that hasn't worked so well for me. I've never completed it on time, and I've only completed one of the novels I set out to write in Novembers past. That one is in mid-rewrite and has problems that I would rather not think about. I think it needs some more rest before I burn it.

Instead I am setting out this year with nothing but a name. Penny Parkinson Poole. Readers of this blog might recognize her. I started writing something about her a year or so ago and it never really took off. I like the name though, and thought she at least deserved her own novel...if not an entire series of them. She is a saucy little minx.

Funny that I should be wearing my Dontcha Wish Your Girlfriend Was HOT LIKE BEA! tshirt on the same day this appears.

The Golden Girls: How one TV show turned an entire generation of american boys into homosexuals

"It was only to be expected that our lonely boys exposed to these conflicted times would succumb to the nagging Golden Girls agenda. These were slender, unathletic children who were left out of the fun militarism of the Reagan years. Skyrocketing divorce rates ruined their faith in traditional relationships. Rock groups like Duran Duran and Styx encouraged big hair and overactive libidos. The show lit a match which enflamed their intense physical urges. With the utmost cruelty and immorality, The Golden Girls seized upon this opportunity to cross the hormonal wires of America’s lost generation.

The results were disastrous.

Click the link above to read more. (Courtesy of ChristWire)

Last night was my third "official" weigh in with Trainer Mike. These are a little frustrating because they are done at the end of the day after I've had 3 meals and countless glasses of water/diet soda. As an example, when I stepped on the scale at home fresh out of the shower yesterday morning I weighed 217lbs, and when I weighed at the gym at 6pm the number was 222lbs. I expected the results to be a bit off, but this is how he measures progress and makes adjustments to my routine accordingly. He was a little disappointed that I only lost 2 pounds and 2 inches overall over the past 6 weeks. On the upside I didn't gain anything back but I'm close to stalling out. He said it could be a number of things. Its common for the progress to slow after a few months since I am in much better shape than I was when I started. But, I need to step up my game on the cardio a bit to get things rolling again. Especially if I want to get through the carb-infused, butter coated holiday season without gaining any weight back. What I do have to accept is that it is very doubtful I'll make my Christmas goal of reaching 200lbs. I'd lie if I said I wasn't a tiny bit discouraged, but I'm pressing on. I'll move the goal date to my birthday in March and see how that goes.

Other than that, I caught up on some TV last night ("Ghost Hunters", "Destination Truth") and started listening to the new Robbie Williams album Reality Killed the Video Star. Its a clever title given what he has been through since he last released new material. I sort of like the first single "Bodies" but it wasn't doing much for me. I had higher hopes for the rest of the tracks, and from what I've heard so far I doubt I'll be buying this one. I'm kind of bummed about that. I also listened to some of the live show he did last week in Cologne and got much more enjoyment out of that. His cover of "Video Killed the Radio Star" is pretty good.

Tonight I'm having dinner at Grandma's house, then tomorrow is our annual Bad Horror Movie Halloween Extravaganza. Its gonna be pouring rain so I can't think of any better way to spend Halloween than with friends, booze and bad horror films. I hope yours is as exciting.