The most disturbing thing I have ever seen

Earlier this year I visited a string of sex shops as part of my research for an artice (and no, research should not be in quotes. I was writing about women-friendly sex shops thankyouverymuch) Anyway, at one shop I visited, the staff got a bit over-excited and started to pull out bizarre merchandise in an effort to shock me. But hey, I've read the Encyclopedia of Unusual Sexual Practices and Bob Flanagan: Supermasochist so I took the three-pound cockring attachment weights in stride (But really? ouch)Unfortunately, pretending to be Ms. Worldy and Unflappable backfired on me, as it just inspired them to bring out the big, uh, guns.

What you see in the picture is euphemistically referred to as an 'anal toy.' It's ten pounds of black rubber, shaped like a woman's calf and foot, and very close to actual size. A heavy gauge chains is attached to the end, I imagine to aid in retrieval. Incredibly, that's not the best part. What made this object so extraordinary was the staff's nickname for it....

(wait for it, this is good)


...The Heather McCartney

The Path to Enlightenment

I've started a new obsession: relaxation. Although I hear the whole point of it is to not be obsessive. Baby steps.

Eh, I suppose I shouldn't really joke, or pretend it's just a silly idea. Really, it's more of a last-ditch effort to haul myself out of an all-encompassing depression, which has been creeping up on me for months. For awhile I didn't really acknowledge it, but just started dropping all the parts of my life that just seemed too overwhelming to deal with. Which, after a few months, was bascially everyone and everything. Eh, even that's not entirely true - I kept going as much as I could, but everything has just seemed so much harder.

But, that wasn't what I meant to talk about. Relaxation. I meant to talk about relaxation.

Today's lesson was skipping work and spending the day at a ridiculously overblown spa. I went to Oasis down on 17th Avenue, mainly because it was the only one I could think of. I can't compare it to anything (except for an extremely unrelaxing trip to a Hungarian bathhouse many years ago), but I think it was a good choice. There's a tone of hushed reverence that permeates everything, infusing the massages and pedicure with a near-religious sense of ritual. I liked the feeling that all this drinking fresh lemon water and padding around in slippers was, in fact, terribly serious business.

First, I had cranio-sacral treatment which aimed to get the energy moving along my spine and through my chakras. I'll admit that I believe in the basic idea of energy in the body, but I've never given much thought to the nature of it, or whether chakras are a legitimate concepts. I couldn't really say what she did, just a series of light touches. But I did feel better during and after. Apparently my root chakra and third chakra are seriously blocked. And I analyze too much (because I don't know what my gut feelings are, because my third chakra is so blocked). Yeah. The easiest thing for me would be to blow it all off as garbage. And maybe it is, but I've reached the point where I almost don't care. It made me feel better, and that's all I care about this point.

The second treatment, a hot stone massage, was also all about the chakras. Who knew? I'm pretty sure everything she said about hot stone being adapted from Buddhist traditions was crap, but it sounded nice. And lying down while someone places warm, smooth stones down your back definitely feels nice, so I won't argue.

I was taking this all so seriously that it almost shocked me to see other patrons act a bit blase towards it. I saw two women dash to the locker room between treatments to check messages on their cells. I don't know, maybe they do this kind of thing a whole lot more often than I do, But I can't imagine caring. I tried as hard as I could to banish every work-related thought that drifted into my brain. Aliens could have taken over the earth and I wouldn't have cared as long as it didn't upset my carefully arranged massage stones.

So, step one in my sanity plan is complete and was successful. Next up, learning how to cope without burying myself in fluffy robes and essential oils...

Denial of Service

Fuck, I've been locked out of here for over a month while beta works itself out. I know it's free and all, but it's been really, really annoying. I tried to go through all the steps and politely follow all the suggestions about resetting my password and checking my spelling, but I quickly realized that I was running around in fucked-up circles...

Can I just swear a few more times? Please?

"None of you understand...

this is a song about life"

songmeanings.net is filled with cringe-worthy adolescent inanity, and that's precisely why I love it. I'm pretty sure it's the kind of place I would have spent many, many hours as a teenager. Back when I was in high school, the interweb this mysterious than people who never left their homes used to talk to each other about Dungeons and Dragons. Or something like that. Anyway, I feel like I was born just a few years too early to live my true calling as highly opinionated, pain in the ass internet teen. I would be on songmeanings every single day, letting everyone know that they're just wrong about Every Day is Like Sunday because the song is about me, like, it's totally my life, and nobody else understands.

Instead I just had to have these kinds of pathetic discussions with my friends. Also, being far too early for Myspace, I was forced to express myself through the traditional teenage venue: the bedroom. Even with the current hysteria around internet predators, I'm sure my parents would have greatly preferred me to have a webpage filled with bad poetry and tributes to bands than a bedroom painted black and filled with candles. (Fire hazard! bad for studying!)

Which, most unfortunately, reminds me of another aspect of my teenage obsession with song lyrics. At one point, I started writing particularly meaningful bits of lyrics on large pieces of art paper and posting them on my walls. For a good part of my senior year of high school, lines from How Soon is Now? were posted above my bed.

So you say its going to happen now
But when exactly do you mean?
Because I've already waited too long
And all my hope is gone...

To me, it was a motivational quote. My own version of those Strength posters. Strangely, I still get that sense...

Okay, that's enough free-association for tonight. I don't want any more accidental confessions to come out...

2-second rule

Yesterday I was stopped at a light when the man crossing the street in front of us suddenly stopped, picked something up off of the road and then popped it in his mouth. No, I don't think you understand, HE PICKED SOMETHING UP OFF THE GROUND AND ATE IT. And he was just a normal looking guy. Calgary has hundreds of wacked-out guys walking around talking to their hands, but I've never seen any of them eat random crap off the pavement.

Seriously, the best possible explanation is that it was a rock. I really, really hope that it was a rock.

The Roches at the Calgary Folk Music Festival

Oh, sorry. This is actually a picture of me running the hell away from the Roches at the Calgary Folk Music Festival. Seriously, this was the most annoying thing I've ever heard. I couldn't get away fast enough and I still have some of the screeching stuck in my head. And the lyrics....don't remind me of the lyrics...

Macy Gray at the Calgary Folk Festival

Or, actually, one of Macy Gray's back-up singers. Macy Gray was harder to draw. She is gigantic, and may have been very drunk. But then again, I can imagine that she's like that all the time. Her band was amazing and the show was a weird mixture of a super-tight choreographed extravanga and a sprawling, shambolic mess. Unfortunately, the only thing anyone is going to remember about her is the 10-minute fiesta of profanity she went on halfway through. Never before has the word 'fuck' be uttered so many times from the folk fest stage, in so many different and interesting ways.

Well, I'll also remember that she had a special glittery mic stand and a cool drummer, but that's just me.

Broken Social Scene

playing on the main stage as the headlining act for Thursday night. There were a whole lot of people on stage. When they all filed out at the start of the set, our friend Brian said "hey look! it's Lighthouse!" Which may have been a bit obscure for the young girls screaming for Feist, but did earn points for referencing obscure Canadiana.

Thankfully, they skipped most of their experimental jazz, played a full set of actual songs and were all-around awesome.

Also: drop that phone park that car sleep on the floor dream about me drop that phone park that car sleep on the floor dream about me drop that phone park that car sleep on the floor dream about me drop that phone park that car sleep on the floor dream about me....

...sorry, sometimes I fall into a bit a trance with that song

21.1

So, July is almost over and I haven't mentioned the central event - the freaking half marathon I started training for back in March. I've done so many 10Ks that I felt like I had to make the jump, but man, was I ever in bad shape when I started. Hauling my ass for just a couple kilometres was really hard. And from those first couple kilometres, the distances only went up. I started doing the Sunday morning runs when they reached 8K, which is generally the farthest I ever run if I don't have a number pinned on me. But then it was 10, 12, 14, 16...

I think my best ever run was 14K, down to Edworthy Park and back in the rain. Or the 18K run where I did the last 8K alone because I took a detour to the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary to use the bathroom, and never bothered to catch up. I knew the way back, and it was nice to finish up along, under my own power. Unfortunately, that one cemented my reputation as the Bathroom Girl, the one that always had to head off after an hour in search of facilities. In the back of my head I was constantly calculating distances and times to the nearest outhouse, gas station or wooded area. For this, I keep a mental map of every possible facility.

The last few training runs were pretty harsh - it was hot and I hadn't learnt the difference between the normal exhaustion that comes with running too damn far, and bad, dangerous, overheated and getting spaced-out exhaustion. Once I decided to stop running and lie down on the grass because it looked so cool and soft. Luckily, I snapped out of it before I passed out cold. Another run I started to feel weak and sat down and my whole body tingled while I saw starbursts. It passed, but I had to walk a mile before I could run again.

It was only during the race that I learned to tell the difference and was able to avoid the bad, throw-uppy type of exhaustion. I kept up with my pace group for the first 8K but then I had to fall behind. By the halfway mark I officially gave up any semblance of a time goal and decided that all I wanted to do was haul my ass over the finish line. Which I did, but it took a looong time. Two hours and forty minutes, actually. Which leaves with a pretty easy goal for the next one - come in under 2:30, and, if possible, ahead of the sweeper.

I can't really remember what I thought about for all that time. I tried not to think about time or distance, but it was hard to shut off the mental calculations. I tried to see it as a walking tour of the city, just speeded up. Which is a fun way of looking at it - we got to go through the Stampede ground before they opened, past the dormant corn dog vendors. Through the edges of downtown, into the Zoo, through Bridgeland, all the way down the river to Crowchild and back up to downtown. I remember how quiet it seemed when I became a straggler. I remember the buzz of excitement when the marathon winner passed me - around the 19th K for me, and the 40th for him. I know that must have dumped at least ten little cups of water over me at the last couple aid stations when it started to get really hot. Being cool for a second outweighed the embarassment of running around soaking wet.

So, I actually finished. Now I just have to make sure that this was just my first half marathon.

Richard Thompson

A tribute in MS Paint, because I'm a geek.
Saw him at Know United Church last night. Right in the first row (or pew, as it were), sweltering hot and sticky all night. Surrounded by awestruck guitar geeks. One of the best shows I've ever seen.