Monday, February 18, 2002

The Art of Flipping in the Snow (11:19 AST, The ShanMonster)

Last night, I spent a few hours doing some dance costuming with Guylaine. Around 22:00, we decided to pack up and go home. On the way out of the fashion studio, we bumped into a pottery student named Allison. She wanted to walk with us, but had to go get her stuff, so Guylaine and I went outside to wait for her.

The weather has been kind to us lately, and it wasn't cold last night. We stood beside the street, breathing the crisp air. A van pulled up to the curb on the other side of the street, and a young man got out to go to a nearby bank machine. The van was filled with young men. I turned away and looked at the snow.

The top of the snow had frozen into a thick crust. I looked at it, and a wacky idea began to form in my head. "I feel like doing some flips," I announced. I climbed the iron fence that separated me from the snowy lawn, leaped into the air, and landed on my back. Normally, in karate class, I am able to get to my feet again in one fluid motion, but the crust of the snow impeded me, and left me lying on my back with my arse wedged into the snow and my feet flailing about above me.

I struggled to my feet, and repeated the process.

Guylaine squealed, and started doing flips, too. Then Allison came out and saw what we were doing. "That looks like fun!" she said. "How do you do it?"

Guylaine and I explained how to do the forward rolls we were doing, and soon all three of us were hurling ourselves around the snowy lawn of the Craft School.

Guylaine noticed the guys in the van were staring at us. "Come on over and try it!" she called. "It's fun!"

The man who'd been using the bank machine was just beginning to get into his van. He stopped, one leg in and the other leg out, and said, "Are you guys 'shrooming?"

"No!" I answered.

He paused again, perplexed. "Then are you artists?"

"Yes!" said Guylaine.

At that, he finished getting into his van and drove away.

I guess artists are pretty freakin' weird.

Sunday, February 17, 2002

Potpourri (14:52 AST, The ShanMonster)

• The Scary Breasts of Chesty Morgan: Watch as sexploitation actress Chesty Morgan busts into action.
• The Lady's Flatus Inhibitor: This (fictional?) Victorian invention and its tragic consequences may have you laughing your butt off.
• Toymaker under fire as Hitler dolls unveiled: The perfect mate for your white supremacist Barbie (thanks, Benoit).
• Big Brother is Watching You Read: I wonder what Big Brother thinks about my taste in Weekly World News tabloids?
• Jihad For Kids: So long, Mr. Rogers--someone out there is training kids to be suicide bombers.
• World's Longest Ear Hair: Everyone needs a claim to fame. This is B.D.Tyagi's.

Thursday, February 14, 2002

I Want To Fuck You Like an Animal (17:11 AST, The ShanMonster)

Animals don't understand safe sex. That's why we have advertisements calculated to make you spay your dogs and cats.

However, animals, although they don't understand safe sex, are more than capable of telling a would-be rapist to fuck off. When Kevin Bryant tried to fuck a six-year old filly like an animal, the filly wasn't having any of that. She successfully fought her rapist off, who, shame-faced, claimed he had run into a tree. Want to find out what happened? Then go to Attack Suspect Injured by Horse in RHE.

Update (10:59 AST, The ShanMonster)

Added NoBody to The ShanMonster vs. the ICQverts.

Happy Naked, Blood-Soaked, Laughing, Dead Saint Day (10:51 AST, The ShanMonster)

St. Valentine's Day is a holiday devoted to whipping, nudity, and death.

There are a few versions of the story. In one, Valentine was a Christian priest in third-century Rome. When Emperor Claudius II, also known as Claudius the Goth decided single men made better soldiers than married ones, he said no more young men could get married. Being a priest, and therefore probably making a little bit of money from the marriage industry, Valentine didn't like this decree. He therefore kept conducting marriages in secret. Claudius found out and was mightily pissed off, resulting in the death of Valentine.

I guess Valentines just aren't Goth.

In another version of the story, Valentine was executed for helping Christians escape from Roman prisons.

In yet another version, Valentine was a prisoner in one of these jails and fell in love with some young sweetie--possibly his jailor's daughter. He wrote her a letter, signing it, "From your Valentine," which makes me believe that had his name been Shithead, we'd be signing cutesy cards on February 14th with "From your Shithead" instead. Fortunately, our Christian martyr had a pretty name.

In some variants, Valentine's big day is February 14th because that was when he was clubbed to death.

There is another reason for the holiday being on the 14th. The Lupercalia was a swank Roman holiday observed on February 15 where girls' names were placed in a box and boys drew the names out. These couples were supposed to be matched off for a whole year, and maybe this is where the practice of Internet dating clubs comes from. The Christian emperor at the time liked the idea of a holiday devoted to love, but frowned on the idea of a holiday being devoted to a non-Christian god, so he switched the day of the celebration to the day before.

So far, this sounds not too far removed from Valentine's Day, but the Lupercalia is much wilder and woolier than all that.

Central to the celebration of the Lupercalia is the lustration. A lustration is a ceremony or sacrifice which brings about purification.

The Lupercalia rite began in a cave outside the city of Rome. Two naked young men presided over the sacrifice of a goat and a dog. They smeared their foreheads with the blood, then wiped it clean with wool dipped in milk. The naked men (laughing all the while) then raced around Rome, whipping women with the strips of goatskin. This goatskin whip is called the februa, and that's where February gets its name. As for the (un)fortunate whipped women, well, they were guaranteed to be fertile.

I'll betcha Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn didn't have this sort of thing in mind when they filmed Roman Holiday back in 1953. Perhaps Penthouse will put out their own historical version of the Lupercalia--something more akin to Caligula.

It's not terribly surprising that some S&M groups still celebrate a version of the Lupercalia, or name themselves after the holiday. More than a few years later, Nietzsche is quoted as saying, "And as for women, don't forget thy whip!" I'm not sure what the context was, but you can be sure it was a bit kinky. Oh, that naughty Nietzsche....

Wednesday, February 13, 2002

Model Behaviour (17:25 AST, The ShanMonster)

I just took another visit to The Wisdom of Supermodels, and yes, most of the quotations are worth a giggle. Gena Lee Nolin's advice on successful living is, "If you eat right and you exercise and you get breast implants, you can look like us." Cindy Crawford also says, "In the studio, I do try to have a thought in my head, so that it's not like a blank stare."

These are supposed to give a bit o' mirth, as far as I can tell. Oh, those wacky super models! However, there is one quip I just don't understand. Kim Alexis is quoted as saying, "I would rather exercise than read a newspaper." Personally, I don't see any problem with this. In fact, I think it's rather admirable. Of course, the local newspaper is pretty freaking terrible in these parts. The content is lacking, the typos are lamentable, and the headlines are often laughable (ie. "Drivers Wake Up to Bad Roads." What the hell were they doing asleep in the first place?). I'd much rather have decent abs than read a homophobic letter to the editor.

People get some pretty strange ideas about the kind of person I am. There are people out there who believe I live in some sort of S&M dungeon. Although my apartment is about as dark as a dungeon, it's not terribly kinky. It's a horrid mess, actually. Clothing, dance paraphernalia, and chinchilla turds are everywhere. Yes, I do have a particularly strange assortment of literature lying about, but I don't see any whips or chains, so I can't be that wild.

Then again, the first time my little sister went to a party with me, my mother fearfully told her, "Don't get in any orgies." The first time my future-father-in-law met me, he said, by way of making conversation, "So, what cult do you belong to?" Then, when f00 and I got married, my father-in-law complimented us on our wedding. "There weren't any fights, and no one was drunk or taking any drugs."

I think he expected people to be shooting up heroin in the aisles.

Sorry to disappoint, folks. I'm a bit more vanilla than that.

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