This Round Life

And, as the current icon proclaims, books are the shit (meme stolen from steppinrazor).

Books that changed your life

I’m going to cheat and go with two.

When I was in the forth grade, I picked up a copy of Christina’s Ghost by Betty Ren Wright (probably best known for writing The Dollhouse Murders). While I enjoyed reading,I didn’t really comprehend the power of a good book – I had never been sucked into a page only to forget the world around me. Christina’s Ghost was the first book to have that effect on me, to be something that I couldn’t put down. I remember sitting at my desk, the book hidden on my lap, and breaking out in goose bumps as a malevolent ghost stalked Christina in a stairway.

The second book which changed my life was The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams. While it never reached the popularity of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it was my first introduction to an author whose work would help me survive high school. No matter how bad a day was, I could always find a quiet corner, crack open one of his books, and laugh. He was proof that my brand of humor wasn’t crazy – merely very out of place in the small hick town of my youth.


One book you've read more than once

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I was checking out some health videos on You Tube and stumbled across one from KOAT Action News 7 with the title Health Beat – Why Overweight People Eat.

Errrr... Because we don’t want to die?

I know it’s probably something to do with a character limit but I’m still finding it highly amusing.

Well girls, time to pack it in and call it a day. After all, if Angelina Jolie is “living large”, clearly we’ve made massive progress. It’s a much more high profile win than Kristie Alley.

The banner itself (which sort of looks like a bad plus-sized label) links to an article claiming that Angeline has been told to gain 28lbs for an upcoming role in The Thomas Crown Affair 2.

I’m torn between laughing and banging my head against the desk at the photo the banner uses in which she is PREGNANT and in a pose which emphasizes her belly. It’s too bad the editors and designers over at MSN can’t tell the difference between a beer belly and the miracle of life.

Twenty-eight pounds on Angelina Jolie is like a drop of water in the ocean. It won’t make her plus sized – heck, it won’t even come close to making her the size of the average North American woman. All it will do is inspire headlines like this which distort reality and make women even more paranoid about their thighs.

Note: the above screenshot is from Windows Live Today.

Last week, I was shocked to find that some women were taking issue with Joss Whedon and Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. But it’s satire! I exclaimed, if you insist on defining Penny as an independent woman who refuses to be a pawn in the game of men, then the whole thing falls apart.

But then I started thinking. What if it wasn’t satire? What if it was a serious tale and Penny was still walking around with blinders on, not valued for her own sake and not questioning the motivations of the men around her. It’s a shame, but is it sexist? If that’s being true to the character, is it wrong or merely unfortunate?

I finally caved in and picked up Twilight on the weekend. With the multitude of icon posts flooding communities, I figured I might as well give it a chance. I was surprised at how much I liked it and how eager I was to keep reading. I finished the first book in a day and a half and started in on the second. There’s just one problem, the female lead – Bella – is almost completely defined by her love for her boyfriend. He is, quite literally, her world. A the series progressed from book one to book two, the spunk and character which made her at least somewhat interesting in the first book fades until she’s little more than an empty cup waiting for his presence to fill her (mind out of the gutters, people).

It disappoints me that a series with the potential to reach so many young women has a protagonist who relies on her relationships with men to make her life worthwhile. I can’t, however, level a charge of sexism at Stephenie Meyer. Because I knew that girl – several of them, in fact.

We don’t live in a perfect world and fiction will always reflect that. A dislike of a character or their motivations doesn’t make them any less true. Just as I read New Moon and hoped I was smarter at seventeen, I know many girls probably read the same pages and thought “that’s me – that’s what I’d do.”

A missed opportunity is not the same as a sexist act.

There are only two things I cook well: vegetarian chilli and vegetarian stew. Both rely heavily on tomatoes and kidney beans and, from a distance, they look virtually indistinguishable from one other. Each yields about five servings. Being the thrifty girl that I am, I usually make one or the other on Sunday and take leftovers into work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

I sometimes wonder if my co-workers think I am on some strange variation of The Cabbage Soup Diet. If I didn’t so often follow it up with chips, I could package my miracle diet and sell it to the masses.

Just a friendly reminder that today is the (omfg no!) last day to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog.

If you like Joss Whedon, if you like Nathan Fillon, if you like the idea of Neil Patrick Harris and a Freeze Ray, you'll click the pretty banner.

A few days before my period (sorry to the one or two men who read this) I turn into a ravenous beast; I crave food incessantly. A simple trip to the store for water can turn into a lengthy twenty minutes of aisle cruising – usually with my befuddled boyfriend in tow.

Tonight was not an exception. I looked at granola bars, pudding, cookies and croissants. “None of these are right,” I complained. “Oh god!” I clamped my hand over my mouth. “I’ve turned into fat stereotype number 197.”

My boyfriend shot me a puzzled look.

“I’m wandering the grocery store looking at the food with something akin to lust in my eyes.”

We round a corner only to find two twenty-somethings making out like the earth is about to be hit by an asteroid.

“Huh,” I shake my head. “I guess I’m not the only one who gets turned on by the deli section.”

Guerrilla gardeners break the law with 'green' graffiti

Toronto — As cities grow and green space disappears, a group of environmentally conscious urban dwellers are taking matters into their own hands to turn parking spaces into gardens, bus stop roofs into lush terraces and neglected parks into inviting play spaces. (read the full CTV article by Andy Johnson)

When I was a child, I loved Shelly Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre – in fact, I still do. I have a handful of episodes spread out over VHS and DVD and I have yet to outgrown their charm. And they are charming – they had to be in order to attract some of the biggest directors and actors of the eighties. Most people who remember the series – and sadly those people are few and far between – remember it fondly. It’s a product of an earlier time, an age when people were still clinging to a belief in magic.

Two decades later, I can’t help but wonder if Shelly Duvall would be able to interest anyone in the pitch for such a show if she were to attempt it tomorrow. No special effects? No action? No big revelations? No plot twists? So what if you can get Steve Carell to play a frog, no one is going to watch.

I would have watched, but then I’m not a film critic.

Tonight I rented Penelope and found it just as sweet and charming as I did when I first saw it in theatres. It’s a good thing I don’t listen to critics. Oh I read movie reviews – love them, in fact – but if I really want to see something, I’ll go in spite of the critics. Penelope, as you’ve probably guessed, didn’t fare too well when sacrificed up to the critic’s alter; this charming little movie got a score of just 48 on metacritic.com.

Wesley Morris wrote in his review for the Boston Globe that ”[Penelope] could have gone in a number of more inspiring allegorical directions but winds up your average bedtime story instead.” What Morris has forgotten is that the world needs bedtime stories and faerie tales. Sometimes the simplest messages – love yourself for who you are, value the person inside – are the ones people need to hear the most.

Penelope is a slightly new twist on an age old tale. It’s not told perfectly but it is told with affection. It stumbles and wanders down a few wrong side streets but it never strays too far from being a nice little movie. Some critics criticized the film’s jumble of visual styles and accents but again, they’re missing the key point – this is a faerie tale. The jumble of styles and characters helps place the story a step out of place with the real world – it could be any city in any country. Yes, it sometimes felt awkward but I think more thought went into those decisions than the filmmakers have been credited with. As for the reviewers and viewers who criticized the film for borrowing visuals from Burton, I’d urge them to check out the work of Edward Gorey – Burton’s great but even he’s not 100% original.

Penelope isn’t a perfect movie but, surrounded by slasher flicks and half-baked comedies , it’s refreshing to see a film that doesn’t aspire to be anything more than a nice bedtime tale. We need more movies like this and, in order for that to happen, we need to give nice little movies half a chance.

She's cute, she's fat, she's funny, and she feels my pain about shopping for fat girl clothes.

I swear, this will be the one and only piece of fan fiction (who or otherwise) that I’ll ever post. Oh, alright, it’s probably the only one. I’m basing this on the fact that it’s the only bit of fic I’ve ever been tempted to jot down and it's taken me this long since Doomsday to post it.

Title: Second Glances
Author: Devi42
Characters: Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jake Simmonds, The Doctor (10)
Rating: G
Spoilers: Through Doomsday
Summary: He told her she could never see him, he didn’t say he could never see her
Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters, I don’t own Doctor Who, I do own over $700 in official BBC merchandise so please don’t kick my ass.

( Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin... )

My comments are sloppy. I admit it. There is, in fact, so sense in denying it. I jot them out quickly – often when half asleep – and I rarely think to go back and read them over before I click “Post Comment".

I also know that typos, mix-ups, and omissions slip through on my blog. Mistakes happen even when your intentions are good and you compose your entries in a word processing program (what can I say, I think better in Word – sad but true).

But the pesky thing is, I don’t get paid to blog or write and I don’t have major websites linking to my content – heck, I couldn’t even get on the blogroll at Shapely Prose (something I’m a bit thankful for, in retrospect).

There is one column that MSN links to on occasion. Whenever I read it, I can’t help but find myself thinking, “someone got paid to write this”.

On the way home from an impulse road trip, I detoured to a market which sells yummy u-bake pizzas. As I walked in, I nodded at the security guard standing post near the door. This grocery store is always guarded – I suspect because it’s open 24 hours and probably had a robbery at some point (in New Brunswick, seeing guards visibly posted at the entrances to stores is quite rare).

It occurred to me that with rising food prices, fuel shortages in the next few years, and a potential environmental crisis looming we may soon see the day when all grocery stores have armed guards. Just today, I spent $10 on three sweet bell peppers. Two were organic (the only reds I could get) but none of them were large. Even the cashier asked if I was sure I wanted to purchase them (to which I sadly replied that those were the only peppers in the store).

Produce and meat will become trappings of the upper class while we scrounge and tell our children about the days when we could walk into any store and buy an apple – an honest to god apple.

Soylent Green needs to become required viewing. Like now.

(If you don't get the subject line, it means you haven't watched Soylent Green. What are you waiting for?)

No, not the Bold and the Beautiful.

Ron Perlman is not the only Beauty and the Beast alumn in Hellboy II.

Incidentally, the movie was fantastic. It was like an eye-candy rollercoaster.

There are five televisions facing the cardio theatre at my gym. Two are always showing Country Music Television. The other three switch back and forth between Dr. Phil, Oprah, and reruns of Friends. Once in a rare while I’ll luck out and one will be showing Jeopardy. This doesn’t happen very often (possibly because I call out the answers and scare my fellow gym rats). As you’ve probably guessed, I don’t watch the televisions at the gym too often.

That’s why I was excited when I discovered that I could put movies and television shows on my shiny new iPod (I’m sure you all already knew this; I’m a late adopter). Sunday night, I browsed the available movies and television shows on iTunes before finally settling on War Games as my first purchase. I watched half of it at the gym yesterday and it was fine fitness fun.

You’d think I would be jumping up and down and praising iTunes to everyone I meet. You’d think I’d burry my dislike of their rights management system and forgive the fact that the program won’t let me import music – purchased legally – through their competitors. After all, the ability to watch what I want on the gym or during my lunch break is a BIG DEAL. Like anything, though, I’ve found pros and cons.

The Bad

Basic movie pricing seems to start at $9.99. None of the movies I browsed (and I spent a good hour clicking) were priced lower than that. The problem with this is that it’s not uncommon to walk into a department store and find a copy of War Games or St. Elmo’s Fire (the next one on my list) for about that same price. You could argue that I’m paying for the convenience of having it on my iPod but what about the money that’s being saved on packaging, production, and physical transport? Sure it costs money to send the file over the internet but it also costs money to put a DVD on a truck and send it to my local Wal-Mart.

Movie rentals would be a nice option (there goes the money I saved by downgrading my cable package) but the rental window is only twenty-four hours. This seems short-sighted to me. If I have the time to spend two hours watching a screen, it’s not going to be the one on my iPod. iPods are devices made for life on the go; it’s more likely that people will be watching their rentals in chunks while riding the bus or working out at the gym. A twenty-four hour rental just doesn’t work for me because I go to the gym after work and do about one hour of cardio. I’d only get to watch half the movie at the gym and would have to watch the other half at home. If they extended the rental window to forty-eight hours I’d be spending at least $12 a week in rentals. Heck, even thirty-six hours would suit my needs.

The Good

While the television selection is limited, it’s still fairly early on in the service offering and I’m optimistic that more players will jump on the wagon. While there may be some issues with rights and distribution, it’s too big of a market for key players to ignore. At $1.99 an episode, it’s reasonably priced and attractive to TV junkies like myself who tend to buy up their favourite series. The last hold outs may be networks like the BBC and HBO who tend to charge extremely high rates for their series (at $1.99 an episode, series three of Doctor Who would cost me $25.87 – a far cry from the $89.99 I paid in-store)

In the End

It’s unlikely that I’ll buy or rent many movies – at least not as the system and pricing stands now. In the meantime, I’ll be keeping an anxious eye on the television selection; I’d like to see this Mad Men that everyone keeps talking about.

Intuitive eating is – if you’ll pardon my language – a bitch. Human beings are not, by nature, known as creatures of restraint. Observe the wrapper and plastic spork in the garbage can next to my desk – they may look innocent but they’re really the signs of a war.

The war goes something like this:

Stomach: I’m hungry
Brain: You can wait.
Stomach: But you’re dragging me to the gym. I’ll crash during your workout. You know what that means.
Brain: ...
Stomach: Yes, that’s right, you’ll binge on junk food waiting for supper to cook because you waited too long to feed me.
Brain: Bastard!
Stomach: What if we compromised? What if you got a tiger brownie and only ate half.
Brain: Trickery.
Stomach: I swear I’ll stop you after a few bites. I won’t let you eat the whole thing.

I inevitably get the brownie. The halfway point comes and I pause. I could wrap it up, save the rest for tomorrow. I could take it home to my boyfriend or toss it in the trash. I could do any one of those things, but I don’t. Once I take that first bite it’s in for a penny, in for a pound.

There are, of course, plenty of reasons for this. I grew up in the era of starving children in China. I’ve also got a healthy attachment to my money and want to get bang for my buck. Lastly, I just have a problem with impulse control. It’s not that I don’t know when I’m full, it’s that I can’t seem to care when food is in my hands.

I know I’m not alone. Fat people, skinny people, old people, young people – most of them do the same thing, though perhaps not as frequently as I do.

One solution would be smaller portion sizes. It’s a suggestion which is tossed out with frequency but most of the onerous is placed on the consumer – don’t clean your plate, ask for a doggie bag, split desert (I’ve split desert, it’s easier than you’d imagine and not the loss of satisfaction you might think).

I’m in favour of smaller portion sizes instead of outright banishment (after all, what’s life if you never get to have chocolate?) but I wish the food and beverage industries would get into the act and cut down the quantity of food in individual packages. Going from big to slightly less big sizes (remember the size of a bag of chips in the early 80’s?) won’t be an easy sell. If I’m used to getting a brownie the size of a slice of pie, I’ll probably feel cheated if it gets cut in half. It would take a period of adjustment and consumer resentment but it might be worth it.

A few weeks shy of thirty, I’m finally making peace with my arms. It’s been a long and bumpy road to acceptance – and there may be some backsliding – but, for the time being, we’ve formed a truce. I get to wear sleeveless dresses and my arms get exposure to the sun (turns out they didn’t like being pale and pasty either).

It started about a month ago when I spotted a woman seated two theatre rows ahead of me wearing a tank top. She was larger than I am but she didn’t look self conscious at all. I would have been fretting and fidgeting; I would have been trying to make sure my bat wings got the least amount of exposure possible. In stark contrast, she looked comfortable – what’s more, she looked good.

A week later I bought a sleeveless dress and gave myself permission to wear it; two weeks later, I bought a bathing suit; a few days after that, I wore the suit in public.

It seems that accepting one small thing (my arms) has set of some sort of chain reaction. I may not be perfectly happy with my body but I’m feeling more comfortable baring parts of it in public. My body hasn’t gotten smaller or firmer – if anything, the opposite is true – and that has me feeling tremendously optimistic that this will be the kind of comfort that’s hard won and slow to fade away.

A coworker was looking at a fitness company’s website. When she clicked on the “team” link on their “About Us” page she noticed that all of the employees had American Gladiator-type names ( Thunder, Blast, Storm, etc). It was promptly decided that we should have secret code names as well.

“Pudge!” I exclaimed. “I’ll be Pudge.”

She shook her head in a “what are we going to so with you” gesture.

I later recounted the story to my boyfriend only to get the same reaction.
They both thought I was putting myself down but I just really liked the idea of being called Pudge; it sounded cute and round and soft and fun.

The self-help section in Chapters is out of control. I wandered into it while trying to find the Community and Culture section. Five minutes later, I had self-diagnosed myself with three conditions and was wondering if there was a self help book for people who read too many self help books.

While there are self help books which can be of value (I’ve even read a few), the sheer volume of them just smacked of a self-indulgent society.

Heading out of town for a few days and won't have computer access until Sunday.