this ain't livin'

Soothing Care | 31Jul07

This entry is about chub rub.If the thought of chub rub causes you to recoil in quiet horror, or you have no idea what “chub rub” means, you should probably go peruse the adventures category or something.

The thing about being, well, aerodynamically curvaceous, is that one experiences chub rub. In fact, most women over a size eight probably do, and I would warrant that some men are familiar with the phenomenon as well. Chub rub is generally confined to that area between the thighs which rubs together, but it can also strike other regions of the body. Especially in hot weather, it can get unbearable. Everyone has various techniques for coping with it, such as wearing compression shorts under regular clothes, or dusting the thigh region with baby powder to prevent chafing.

Peaches recently turned me onto something much neater and more efficient, however. It’s called Soothing Care and it’s made by the Monistat people. I’m not really a product endorsements kind of girl, but I have to say, I endorse this product. Soothing Care is a nifty gel which comes in a discreet tube. You squirt a little out, rub it on the area of interest, and it dries to a smooth powder. The powder doesn’t rub off, doesn’t smell funny, and is generally unobtrusive…but I can wear skirts! All day! Go out dancing! Even run, if I wasn’t so damn lazy.

If you do happen to suffer from chub rub, go out and grab yourself a tube. If they don’t have it in your region of the world and you ask me nicely, I might send you one. Actually, if you ask Monistat nicely they will send you a sample, too.

Anyway, the only problem with this otherwise excellent product is that…it’s made by Monistat. For those of you who don’t know what Monistat is, it’s a very popular product for relieving yeast infections. If you don’t know what a yeast infection is…er…here’s a Wikipedia article complete with gross pictures. There are a number of different formulations, leading to a wall of Monistat products which have to be waded through to find the Soothing Care, since because it has a Monistat label, stores stock it with the other Monistat stuff. This can be, well, rather awkward, depending on who you have with you. And you just know that everyone in the store is looking at you, and this being a small town, it’s not just the generic embarrassment which accompanies any sensitive purchase, it’s “hrm, which one of these people is going to tell my father I skulked in the aisle with the yeast infection creams for 20 minutes the other day.”

Once you overcome the skulking in the aisle problem, you still have to buy it from the bored pimple-bedecked clerk who will take approximately six years to painstakingly scan it and then you have to argue about whether you need a bag or not. If you’re really fortunate, something will go wrong and the clerk will blare:

“Price check for Monistat on register two!”

And then your day will be complete, and you will scuttle from the store with your tube of Soothing Care, muttering darkly to yourself and kicking over the damn pile of shopping baskets they always leave right next to the door.

Friendly Hacksaws | 31Jul07

A doctor stands accused of over-prescribing drugs to a dying man to hasten an organ transplant. This is one of the many reasons we need a well organized national donor program.

237 reasons to hump? I can probably think of a few more.

Surgery tourism is beginning to be quite appealing, especially for those of us languishing in privatized healthcare systems.

Speeding tickets are getting pricey.

A study reveals that doctors with “religious” leanings are not, in fact, more likely to treat the poor and needy.

UN peacekeeping troops are finally being sent to Darfur…too little, too late in my opinion.

Bondage | 30Jul07

So, the Chronicle has a section for weird news that they call “Bondage.” And every time I see it, I kind of cringe. I’ve been debating whether or not to talk about my dislike of the “Bondage” column for various reasons, but today I decided why not, what the hell, might as well go for it.

So, the thing that really bothers me is the implication that bondage is weird, aberrant, or amusing. Especially in a city like San Francisco, which has a huge progressive and leather community, the idea of using the term in this way kind of surprises me. When I first saw it, I actually thought that the Chronicle was starting a kinky news service, and I thought that would be pretty awesome. Well, they do have a kinky columnist now, but the “Bondage” column has been around a lot longer than Violet Blue’s column has, and Ms. Blue has had some problems with her content, like the Chronicle refusing to link to naughty websites in the context of her column.

So, why does it bother me that “Bondage” is belittled by the Chronicle in the form of an amusing news column? Surely there are far more important things for me to worry about, right? Well, first of all, let’s talk about what bondage is, because it means a lot of things to a lot of different people. For me, bondage is part of a larger alt-sex and, yes, kinky community, to which I belong. I’m not sure that I have explicitly stated that anywhere on this website, because I hesitate dragging personal details about my life into this site (ruminative “reflections” columns aside). I’m not going to go into the gory details of my sex life, and I suggest that if you are really clueless in matters of kink, you read through some of my “further readings in sexuality” which can be found on my links page. In the strictest sense, bondage, to me, is about confinement, sensation, and pushing limits in a safe, sane, and consensual environment. It’s also about satiny rope on bare skin, the play of leather on flesh, and many other things. But for the sake of my squeamish readers, I’ll pick this up in another post.

I have hesitated to come out about my membership in the kink community for many of the same reasons I dislike the “Bondage” column. The moment that I admit my alliance with alternative sexuality, you, dear reader, are jumping to conclusions about me. Perhaps it’s merely an “aha! I suspected it all along,” but it might unfortunately be something much darker as well.

I know that kinksters read this blog, because contrary to popular belief we don’t actually spend all of our time tying each other up and leading each other around fetish parties like dogs. Indeed, many kinksters have wide and varied interests, and we all live very different lifestyles. Some of us might look decidedly vanilla at casual glance, while others among us have obviously embraced their roles in the fetish community.

Unfortunately, many people have very…interesting views about alternative sexuality and lifestyles. Sadly, this makes for a lot of prejudice against us. I know people who have been outed at work and fired, been rudely turned down when they ask people on dates, and others who have struggled with a variety of issues relating to their sexuality. In a way, I liken kinksters to gays and lesbians.

Straight vanilla people can generally fearlessly walk up to someone in a coffeehouse and say “hey, that looks like an interesting book, would you like to go out for coffee?”

Gays and lesbians can’t do that, for fear of being greeted with hate speech and rejection. And kinksters, likewise, struggle, because we have to struggle with when, exactly, we bring up our own sexuality. It would hardly be fair for me to ask a vanilla boy out on a date, go through an extended courtship, and then discover that we aren’t compatible at all. On the other hand, that innocuous looking cutie in Headlands leaning over a laptop might be into the same kinds of things I am, but I can’t peer over his shoulder to check and see if Twisted Monk is on his RSS feeds.

Heterosexuals with mundane tastes can live in confidence that they will be accepted by society. Kinksters struggle through their teenage years, with most of us thrashing around until we realize that there is a community and a place for us. And then we have to find medical professionals who won’t chastise us for the way we live, employers who won’t be seized with panic at the thought of what we might have been doing over the weekend, and come out to our friends. Have my experiences been mirrored by all members of the kink community? Of course not, but I would imagine that my words strike chords with many.

Just like I cringe when I hear a gay joke and people laugh at it, I twitch when I hear bondage reduced to humor. Can bondage be funny? Oh, yes, beautifully yes, and humor is very much a part of my sexuality. But it should not, in my mind, be used as a header for a weird news column, because that implies that bondage is weird. Which, certainly, it can be, but it perpetuates a stereotype, like “all tattooed people are scary aberrant freaks of nature bent on the destruction of society” or “all vanilla people only know one sex position.” Why not call the “Bondage” column “Monogamy,” because I have a feeling that monogamy is far more rare and weird than bondage.

It is only through outreach and education that we will find common ground with all people, and distancing ourselves out of discomfort and fear is not the way. Just as I encourage people to treat modified individuals with respect, curiosity, and love, I invite my readers to do the same with the kinksters in their lives. Instead of greeting revelations like “I really enjoy dressing up as a pony and being whipped around a racetrack” with horror, why not talk about the broader cultural world of pony play? Or ask about what it’s like? People don’t come up with personal revelations just to have them sink heavily to the bottom of a conversation like stones, after all.

Cracked Broughams | 30Jul07

Ed Jew’s mail deliveries would be a good way to find out where he really lives, right? Oh, except that his mail goes to…Burlingame.

Bad news for stoners…pot is actually worse for you than tobacco is. Now, one could argue that chronic (heh heh) marijuana users smoke less joints than chronic tobacco users smoke cigarettes, so the risk may not be as bad as it’s made out to be, but still…kids, you’re setting something on fire and inhaling the smoke. How can that be good for your tender lungs?

The Times suggests that cutting down on doctor’s salaries is an important step in reforming the healthcare system…I would pair that with a caveat that malpractice insurance rates need to drop, especially for general practitioners. What do my doctor readers think?

Musical escapism is valuable for many people, including men and women serving in Iraq.

Getting disability pay after being wounded in combat isn’t exactly a piece of cake.

Yay fat prejudice! Now employers are financially penalizing their overweight employees…is that even legal? This smells like discrimination to me.

On Entitlement and Rivers | 29Jul07

Weekends are my time to do nothing. I do nothing very strenuously for about 48 hours so that I feel energized and prepared for work the next day. After my visiting friend yesterday, I was exhausted, and my plan was to loaf on the porch all day reading cheesy fiction and drinking iced tea. I got up around 11, and quickly put my plan into action, relocating my deck chair periodically when it got to be too hot. To my astonishment, the phone rang around 12:30 or so, and I found myself whisked into a river adventure.

This is not to say that I resent these pleasant interruptions of my languor, just that it was a bit unexpected and I was not fully prepared. We tromped off, making a few stops along the way, and then parked at our favorite swimming hole. We were fairly quiet as we walked through the woods down to the river, thinking about the pleasures ahead, and to our astonishment we saw a rather large family ensconced on the bank. Without a word, or a glance, we backed away and ended up wearily back at the road again.

I was a bit mystified, because there was no car parked anywhere in sight. Apparently the family had descended from nowhere. We bitterly loaded up again, and decided to quest to the neat swimming whole that Sven, Tristan and I found a few weeks ago. After almost passing it, we got out, loaded up again, and started to head for the banks. I heard a dog barking, and I said…”no, surely not…” while I looked for a car.

Alas, despite the fact that there was obviously no car in evidence, a herd of rednecks had descended upon this swimming hole as well. This was starting to feel personal, and we traipsed back to the car yet again. I just wanted to lie on a bank and flop about in the water a bit, so I was bitterly unhappy that all of my swimming holes had been taken up.

“Well,” I said. “We could try Swan’s Nest…it’s probably infested, though.”

We drove back down the road, talking about our sense of entitlement. After all, the river is public property. None of these swimming holes are “mine” in the literal sense, so it’s not really reasonable to get riled up about it. But it’s deeply offensive when people are camped out at a preferred swimming spot, especially when you plan to swim alone.

“Why,” Brendan asked me later, “don’t you like to swim with other people?”

“Well, if it had been, say, you and Sarah, I would have joined you…”

But the fact is, I don’t like swimming with strangers. I go to the river to be alone with friends, not to deal with other people, their garbage, their screaming spawn, and whatever else they may have brought. And I’ll bet that people using similar hidden spots use them for the same reason. I would be rather irked if a bunch of people just popped up at a swimming hole when I was using it, and I respect that emotion in others. Furthermore, I categorically refuse to wear a bathing suit. I don’t like them. I want to lounge naked on the river bank, goddamnit, because that is what I do. Other people, however, have a problem with that. And while that’s fine, it makes for awkwardness when you invade their peaceful family riverbank outing. The only time people have ever shown up at a swimming hole after I arrived, they have quietly backpedaled and found another spot, and I do likewise in the reverse of that situation.

Which is, I think, as it should be. At an acknowledged public swimming spot, obviously, this is not the case. But at smaller, more private swimming holes, one must respect the order of precedence. There’s something to be said for carving out a little spot in nature, alone, for a few hours.

Fortunately for my friend and I, Swan’s Nest was empty and we lolled on the rocks for several enjoyable hours in the sun, periodically jumping into the deliciously deep swimming hole, which also happened to be the perfect temperature. Given the condition of the trail to Swan’s Nest, it doesn’t look like it’s a popular spot at the moment, which is good for me to keep in mind. Poison oak is a great deterrent, I must say.

Heated Oleander | 29Jul07

Oceans, live? Yes, telepresence for the world’s oceans is starting to emerge. And it’s awesome.

In shocking news, saving money allows you to do more things in the long term. Wow. I never would have guessed.

Love impacts brain function. I always knew it!

Bush aides blocked a surgeon general’s report which was less than favorable to Bush administration policies. If this blockage is being reported…what haven’t we heard about?

Flock of Dodos is being featured on To the Best of Our Knowledge right now…and it looks pretty awesome.

Streaming media is the new piracy. It’s also clever, and, dare I admit it, terribly handy.

Tasers are drawing rather a lot of fire these days, thanks to controversies over their use.

The LA Weekly has some scathing commentary on the YouTube debates.

Romping in Bragg | 28Jul07

While I was lounging on the porch reading a cheesy novel today, the phone rang, and it turned out to be one of my friends from the East Bay, so I answered it.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I’m in Fort Bragg,” she announced gleefully.

As indeed she was. I really like being surprised by visits from friends, especially those who live far-ish away, since it’s more exciting. First we went and wandered around Understuff while she looked at panties. (By the way, my plus size readers, I discovered the perfect bra there recently. It’s the Natori Sport and although it’s allegedly a sports bra, it’s an all around comfortable bra which feels like not wearing a bra at all. When you’ve got big gazongas, that’s saying something.)

We also took her dog, Milo, to Jughandle, and we romped around with him. Milo is kind of like the canid version of Loki, and the two in fact look quite alike. Loki puffed up like a well leavened bread dough when he saw Milo romping around in the yard, so I doubt that he would appreciate the comparison. At any rate, Milo doesn’t like water nearly as much as Loki does, so he was a bit bitter about wading in the stream with us. I haven’t been to Jughandle in quite a while, and I forgot how infested with tourists it gets. Milo seemed to enjoy himself, though. He’s a pretty good kid, for a dog.

Upon our return to Fort Bragg, we went for a tub at the spa and then headed upstairs to the Bistro. On our way up we ran into another friend, whom we gangpressed into joining us, and we had a romping meal talking about Harry Potter and fan fiction. Alas, no beignets on the menu, to my bitter disappointment. But there was some awesome steak tartare, and we also enjoyed scallops with a warm creamy corn sauce, and seared tombo tuna. I like corn. I’ve been on a corn kick this week, starting with corn chowder on Wednesday. Mmm. Corn. We followed with some sorbet and a choice cookie experience. Choice.

I also ran into one of Mr. Bell’s favourite people, Dr. Jordan, along with his wife Dr. Leslie. They were enjoying an evening off as well as some Bistro food. Summertime is danger time for pets, so the clinic has apparently been hopping. Remember, kids, don’t leave pets (or children) in cars unattended, and keep dogs on leash, since dogfights can rack up major vet bills!

All in all, an awesome day. I love it when a day goes from ordinary lounging to extraordinary romping. Now I’m all tuckered out, though!

Stinky Leeks | 28Jul07

Foreclosures are skyrocketing thanks to subprime loans, raising some questions about the ability of Americans to realistically assess their finances and the market.

Asking for medical leave to care for yourself or a sick family member is a great way to get fired, apparently, despite the fact that this type of discrimination is clearly illegal in many regions.

A neat chart quickly illustrates where various candidates stand on major issues like gun control, abortion, and gay rights, among many others.

A BBC reporter is about to embark on a quest across the United States, only speaking Spanish. It should be interesting…

Phoenix Rising is a summer camp with an interesting twist…it’s a place for teens to recover from bereavement in the company of other teens.

Ever wondered what the top 10 banned books of the twentieth century were?

My Father the Party Animal | 27Jul07

My father came by earlier to drop off some produce from his garden, and I gave him some Korean garlic from the farmers’ market because I thought he and my Chinese mother might enjoy it. I may have written about the Korean garlic before, but it’s worth saying again: this garlic will blow your mind. Truly. It is a firey, intense experience, and when I pulled the garlic out of its wrappings, the whole house suddenly smelled garlicky.

For once, my father wasn’t in a big hurry to traipse off somewhere, so he sat and had a slice of chocolate torte with ice cream. I’m not sure where I went wrong with this particular torte, but it unfortunately came out a little too dry. The rich, fudgy texture which it acquires after a night in the fridge helped to save it, but not entirely. However, given that there’s about $20 worth of Scharffenberger in there, I feel obligated to eat it. After my dumpster diving at Scharffenberger’s mighty fine plant in Berkeley, it does feel a little odd to pay for their chocolate.

At any rate, I was reminded recently of a story from my childhood, when my father was still working at the bar. Throughout my childhood, I had one solid best friend, whom I’ve kind of lost touch with in the last few years, unfortunately. At any rate, her mother was rather impish, and she was always executing elaborate practical jokes or taking the piss out of someone. This trait sometimes led to entertaining consequences, as occurred during the party animal incident.

There was a brief period of time when I used to play with two girls who lived down the road from me. They didn’t usually spend the night or anything, but we would romp around and sometimes my father would take us to the beach or on some other expedition. Their mom was a single mother, so I think she was pretty stoked to have someone look after her girls for a few hours now and then, and I would hang out at their house periodically as well.

One day, on our way home from school, I asked if they wanted to come over when they were done with their homework.

“Oh,” one of them said. “Well, our mom says we’re not supposed to go over to your house anymore, but you can come over the ours.”

“Oh, well. Why can’t you come over?”

“She didn’t say.”

When I got home and duly relayed the story to my father, he was a little mystified, but also somewhat concerned. As, understandably, a parent would be when his child says that her friends “aren’t allowed” at her house anymore. So he called their mother, and it turned that she had “heard from someone” that my father was a bit of a “party animal” and she didn’t want her girls coming over to our house anymore, because she didn’t want them exposed to “bad influences.” My father patiently tried to explain that this was in fact not the case, and that working in a bar does not make someone a party animal. But the mother was adamant, and said that while it was fine for me to come to their house, she didn’t want the girls at ours.

Puzzled about the conversation, my father politely said good bye and hung up. Given my propensity for telling tall tales, he asked me if perhaps I had been spreading tales of hijinks at school. I assured him that I wasn’t, and we left things there for the time being. My friendship with the girls down the street sort of dissolved, not because of the party animal incident but because we began to drift apart, as young girls do, and then they moved away.

Over the next few months, every now and then my father would encounter someone who would give him the nudge and the wink, make a comment about his wild ways, or pull their impressionable child away while glaring. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what was going on until there was a big art opening in the art gallery we lived in, and my best friend happened to be staying the night. When her mother dropped her off, her mother nodded at the chaos in the art gallery and said “I see you’re quite the arty animal tonight.”

My father narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, and then shook his head as though dismissing an idea. My friend and I romped through the evening, and the next day we had pancakes and went to Jughandle beach to build some sort of fantastic construction or another. When he dropped my friend off at her house, he started gently teasing her mother, carrying on a long tradition between the two of them of elaborate joking and double entendre. She, of course, brought up his slowly growing reputation for rambunctious doings, and my father said:

“Yeah, it’s the weirdest thing, I don’t know where people got that impression. It seemed to happen overnight, but it makes me feel really awkward because people seem to be making all sorts of crazy assumptions about me.”

“Oh, no,” my friend’s mother said. “I never thought it would come to that! I was just joking around with so and so’s mother, and I was making a pun, you know, because you live in an art gallery, about you being an arty animal. I didn’t realize she thought I said ‘party animal’ until it got entirely out of control!”

Once my father had tracked down the source of the rumors, he had the good grace to not be too irritated by it, and his party animal reputation became a running joke among the people who knew him. Periodically, someone who had not been straightened out would bring it up, but as a general rule I thought the rumor had died.

That’s why I was kind of surprised the other day when I was in Harvest and I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in awhile, who inquired after my health and asked how my father was doing. “He used to be quite the party animal, you know,” she said*, nodding sagely. “But I suppose he’s over that now.”

“Oh, no,” I said with a smirk. “He’s still out living it up at the Tip Top every chance he gets. Really, his wacky doings put me to shame.”

“Oh, well then,” she said, and our conversation continued awkwardly for a few more minutes before she wheeled off, muttering something about a sale in aisle three.

Given the nature of a small town life, we’ll see if my glib comment causes my father’s party animal reputation to be revived or not. I give it another two weeks before it works its way back to me, probably richly embroidered with a few Irish nuns and a drinking contest with some Australians.

*Now, while it is entirely possible that my father was indeed a party animal, and somehow concealed this fact from me, I think it’s far more likely that this woman, who has never actually met my father, was simply parroting a widely spread rumor, as often happens in this part of the world. How do I know she hasn’t met my father? She kept calling him “George” and referring to a large tattoo of an eagle on his forecep.

Controversial Rocks | 27Jul07

A hospital institutes more rigorous infection protocol in an attempt to fight deadly bacteria. Apparently, it works.

New York tries to crack down on illegal guns by going across the border to go after gun dealers in the notoriously freewheeling South.

Cemetery conservation is a subject I am very interested in, and this article is a neat profile of the conservation movement.

Botulism contaminated food is still available for sale…and it’s made in the US, so no complaining about China!

In local news, the game’s afoot at Animal Care and Control, again.