Hemlock B Bootsalotta

One of the things that is really common in my work place is fund-raising campaigns. Every spring the_axel participates in the Ride For The Heart, and in fact we even came back from this year's Convergence road trip a day early so he wouldn't miss it. The company is a major sponsor for Run For The Cure. The yearly United Way campaign is just winding down. Last year a bunch of the people I work with even got together to gather funds and supplies for one of the local women's shelters.

So last month one of the guys in another department got the workplace involved in our first ever Movember campaign. It's to raise funds for something to do with prostate cancer - what exactly is a bit hard to tell because the website is kind of crap - but I assume it's a good cause and money raised will go to reduce the number of people affected by what is really a very nasty disease. During the fundraising they sponsored a men's bake sale, a casual week, and a whole bunch of the guys growing mustaches and wandering around looking self-conscious.

So I'm going into the bathroom one day, as you do. And as usual there are a pile of posters on the door. There are always posters on the bathroom door, it's the one part of the building that they can pretty much guarantee every employee will visit at least once over the course of a week.

And it had an ad for the men's bake sale. Only usually the ads for the ubiquitous fundraising bake sales say, "Bring food! Eat food! Good cause!"

And this one said, "Can your husband/partner bake? With a few simple lessons could he learn how?"

What?

There is a certain amount of mild peer pressure that goes into these things - the organizers go from desk to desk and ask people if they can contribute anything. So they were going around and asking the men if they could ask their wives to bake something from them to bring in.

What?

Everybody here knows I'm Axel's partner. I was just waiting for somebody to come up and ask me if I would bake something for Axel.

For some reason they didn't.

I am now on iteration six of "why did you delete my yahoogroup". The emails keep getting longer as I include all the paragraphs about how their response has once again completely failed to answer my question.

I honestly no longer expect an explanation, I'm just curious to see how long we can keep this up.

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One of the differences between exercising at the Y' and the community centre where I currently work out is the big honkin' television in the weight room. Since I go there during the day I am now regularily exposed to the visual and auditory treat that is daytime television programming.

It's very blatantly targetted to women, which I kinda knew already without really thinking about it. What I hadn't realized is just how condescending it is. Holy crap. It's all I can do not to punt a water bottle through the screen some days.

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I've also been force-feeding myself reality television for the last couple of months and that's been really educational. I found the Amazing Race really engaging, but so far that's the only one that's had any appeal at all.

I caught the episode of America's Top Model where they actually had the women painted up and posing as victims of violent murders. At one point I was standing up in the living room and yelling at the judges, "What the hell is WRONG with you people!"

I also watched a couple of seasons of Big Brother and I found that one really interesting. The show itself is actually really dull but I get fascinated by watching the changes I could see in peoples' personalities over the three months of the show. I think because I was viewing the whole thing condensed into one or two sittings it became much more obvious what effect the environment had on the participants.

The people who live in the Big Brother household live in a total lack of privacy but at the same time they are completely isolated from the outside world. So they completely lose any sense of perspective. It was like watching one of those old brain-washing experiments where you could witness the obsessiveness and paranoia growing with every interaction.

I kept wondering what would have happened if they left the house and discovered some major event had occured while they were in there and isolated - what effect that revelation would have on them. Like if they had been in there during the events of 9/11, say.

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Today is my first day of bringing my bike to work. Wheeee!

I got a ad today from Birks. The spend-two-months-salary-on-a-glittery-rock Birks. I got on their mailing list somehow and cannot figure out how to get off the damn thing.

The ad was for their new Baby Collection.

I checked. They really do mean stuff for babies.

...

I have no words.

I found a discussion board where you get paid to post. No shit. My theory is that they are trying to build up a big user base, get all sect-zie like LJ and then start charging people to join.

Dude, it's painful in there.

Anyway I responded to a post today that has kinda got me freaked out. Some mother was talking about how she was reading her 15 year-old daughter's dairy. "As any good mother would". And discovered that her daughter had been raped. And was afraid to tell her parents. The mother posted asking for advice on how to approach the daughter, given that bringing the subject up would be an admission that she was snooping.

Holy fuck.

My response was to ask if the girl had a trusted adult in her life - a teacher perhaps, an adult relative, a friend of the family - who could be asked to check in on the teenager in case she felt comfortable opening up. And to say as pointedly as I could, "And forget any chance that it might be you, because you've already blown that part of your relationship by reading her diary."

But what really floored me was the 5 pages of response saying, "Thank god you were reading her diary so you can force her to admit what happened to her and make her go get help."

Because you know, nothing scrubs out the sour shit taste of violation quite like another, even more intimate, violation.

Jesus.

I live in a very different world. Today, this is not a bad thing.

I find myself increasingly alienated from a society where people turn their nose up at swallowing spunk because it's disgusting, but will actively put powdered drink mix into their mouths.

Today was my monthly "sleep in as late you can" day. I feel great.

Then I got to lounge around the house in my robe for a couple of hours drinking coffee and reading LJ. It's almost like this weekend phenomenon I've heard so much about. bliss!

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So I'm perusing LJ and I see that somebody has set up a new rating community specifically for people who like to get their party on. "I am sick of not being accepted at rating communities because I do drugs."

Dude, if not being accepted by rating communities pisses you off that much, you're right. Your drug habit is not your biggest problem.

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I got a christmas card from my chiropractor today. I have also received christmas cards from my dentist, blood donor clinic, optitian and real estate agent.

I don't do Christmas so I just look at them and toss them straight into the recycling bin. And it kinda bugs me. I rail against planned obselecence. I reuse as much as I can and recycle the rest. I buy most of my stuff used and I take things apart and spend more time and money fixing them than it would cost to buy new ones. I even bring home my food scraps from work so they can go into the composter.

And every year I toss out dozens of Christmas cards. I wonder if I could start a no-mailing list for seasons greetings.

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My skin is so dry I've started to develop stigmata. In order to prepare for my upcoming deification, I've set up a map. Add yourself and I'll make sure the human sacrifices pass you by.

http://www.frappr.com/thesiobhan

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( In related news, I am the Devil )

Told ya.