im in ur stor bying gud buks

I have the coolest friends on the face of the planet:

Back to normal?

Means taking a break from coding field notes (30% of which involves compulsively checking Facebook and reading blogs on roller derby erm…I mean, “doing research”) and slapping up some links!  I’ve been rather shocked at the comments I’ve received (offline, you cowards!) from friends and family asking when I’ll be bringing back the “weekly round-up” posts.  Sadly, I’m far too unreliable to do something weekly, but I will do whenever-I-want -to round-ups of stuff that’s caught my eye.

In the “what in the holy hell?!” department we have a couple of doozies, the first (thanks to Nick for passing along this gem) from the Neuticles website.  Admittedly I laughed myself stupid the first time I looked at the web-site and have alternatively scratched my head and peed a little for every subsequent visit.  Call me callous, but really?  Really?!  Does Fido care?  Do we have irrevocable evidence that this sort of procedure helps the psychological damage done to animals by routine neutering?  Is there any psychological damage in the first place?!  Ahh well, at least I have something really fun to look at when the world gets ole’ DW down.  Well, that and the American Cornhole Association site. (Juvenile? Oh yes. Also, pull that stick out of your ass.)

Me too!

The second goes to J&D for the fantastically ingenious bacon lip-balm.  Truly the worlds most amazing cosmetic.

In a world of conflict between differing schools of beauty (and what the hell does that even mean?!) the Adipositivity project shines.  This is taken directly from the sites front page:

The women you see in these images are educators, executives, mothers, musicians, professionals, performers, artists, activists, clerks, and writers. They are perhaps even the women you’ve clucked at on the subway, rolled your eyes at in the market, or joked about with your friends.

I for one think the site is beautifully done and while I don’t necessarily condone a push for all plus-sized models, it is nice to see all shapes and sizes being portrayed in a way that showcases the humanity of the model.  Plus, the photographer is a fan of okonomiyaki and any lover of okonomiyaki is a friend of mine.  In the same vein, Myra Medible of American Sexuality writes a fantastic article on big butts and the sneaky little cultural nuances therein.  I was particularly fond of this gem:

It may well be that America’s butt fling signals a growing acceptance of difference-a desire to broaden the repertoire of acceptable body types and beauty myths. If this celebration of fulsome booty helps women move beyond the self-hatred and anxiety attached to body fat or encourages ethnic pride in women whose bodies have historically been pathologized and denigrated-then power to the butt, indeed.

Indeed!  I wish I would have stumbled upon this article while taking my Commodities and Culture course last semester.  It would have been a riot to research a paper on the commodification of the ass (and by default, fat).  I’m serious.

But really, in the end I’m going to side with Brother Ali (a Muslim, albino rapper) when he said:

Dependin’ on the day, and dependin’ on what I ate,
I’m anywhere from 20 to 35 pounds overweight.
I got red eyes, and one of ‘em’s lazy,
and they both squint when the sun shines so I look crazy.
I’m albino man, I know I’m pink and pale…
I’m not the classic profile of what the ladies want.
You might think I’m depressed as can be,
But when I look in the mirror I see sexy-ass me.
And if that’s somethin’ that you can’t respect then that’s peace.
My life’s better without you actually.
To everyone out there, who’s a little different,
I say, “damn a magazine, these is God’s fingerprints.
You can call me ugly but can’t take nothin’ from me.
I am what I am, doctor, you ain’t gotta love me.”

I’ma be all right, you ain’t gotta be my friend tonight (you ain’t gotta love me).
An’ I’ma be okay, you would probably bore me anyway (you ain’t gotta love me).

Time for sex!  Oh you knew it was coming.  (Word of warning: I’m really not censoring myself in this post, so if snarky comments regarding things of a sexual nature from an adult long beyond the age of consent offend you, you should probably never read my blog again.)

Wendy Atterberry of The Frisky (best. blog. ever) writes a delightfully cheeky response to a Men’s Health article “Make Her Fantasies Come True”. The handful she shoots down are absolutely hilarious (and spot-on) and I decided to follow (read: copy) her lead by creating my own responses:

3. Mow the lawn in jeans and no shirt so I can play desperate housewife from the window.
Then come inside smelling of fresh-cut grass, sweat, and pheromones, and make love to me on the dining-room table.

90% of the men I’m interested in would probably horrify the neighbours by prancing around the front yard with hot-pants and no shirt.  Guys, you can look just a sexy with that sweat-stained t-shirt still on.  Besides, what’s not hot about stripping you out of your clothes?  And what’s not hot about having a woman at you like a rabid drop bear, trying to get said sweaty clothes off of you?  That’s what I thought.

7. Read up on sex.
There are books on boinking that are worth the embarrassment of buying them. Like Ian Kerner’s She Comes First, for example. It’s a guide to giving oral sex so well that your partner will insist on cooking you blueberry pancakes the next morning. Yes, you’re an amazing lover already, but Kerner has a Ph.D. for a reason.

They have a Ph.D. program in oral sex?!  Sign me up for that!  And I can’t cook worth a crap so honey, make your own damn pancakes.

10. Ask to take black-and-white photos of me naked.
I want you to, but I’m not so cocky as to suggest that my body could be a work of art. That’s why I need you to do it for me. Bring it up after we’ve had sex. Tell me that the curve of my hips needs to be immortalized. Then, one rainy Saturday night, produce a bottle of wine and a camera.

It’s gonna take far more than one bottle to convince me to let you take photos of my no-no bits, no matter how many sweet compliments you whisper in my ear.

And so on and so fourth.  I pity the fool who takes these seriously.  Then again, I feel the same sort of head-shaking shame for the women’s magazines that offer the same kind of advice to the tune of “how to please your man in 50 different steps!” one of which will inevitably include circus-worthy contortion performances that only lead to awkward Q&A sessions with your doctor.  And chiropractor.  Moving along.

“Worried about your partner’s bedpost notches?  Get over it!” says John DeVore.  While I tend to agree with this on principle, it’s the aversion to the Itch N’ Scratch out there that does make me worry about a partners notches (that and why they have a knife so close to the bed.  Har har har.)  I did dig this though:

Personally, I love a “slut”, someone who knows what they want, who goes for it, who never apologizes, but who learns from experience. I also appreciate full-disclosure. And anyone who doesn’t live their life like they are making it up on the go is lying to themselves.

I can appreciate the art of self-gratification, so too can the masterminds behind Babeland and the oh-so-sleek SaSi – the Wii/iPod of pleasure-toys.  Not only does this puppy have a sexy little design, it is programmed to remember what you’ve done before, just like a real lover!  Hopefully.  If it wasn’t for the $100+ price tag, I’d be all over this like…well, you get the idea.

Also from The Frisky, Simcha brings us an absolutly fascinating piece on male lesbian sexual fantasy.  The reader comments about bisexuality and the semantics thereof are interesting to say the least.  Really – if you click no other link on this post, click that one.

On that note, one last link for you to chew on (it’s not bacon flavoured though, for shame).  I’m off to adventure.  Or sleep.  Mostly sleep.

Oh, yes and my new digs:

Vietnam and Cambodia

IT’S HERE!!!

I’m going to try something different this time around in regards to holiday photo sharing; a slide show. It’s pretty simple, you can manually choose a photo to view from the bottom of the large gallery image, page through each image with the arrows at the top of the gallery view screen or simply wait for the next photo to come up.

Here we go!

The first city I stopped at was the large, northern city of Hanoi. It was here that I fell into a gutter, was side-swiped by a motorbike and was pick-pocketed within 24 hours. It was a glorious time!

The second city was Ninh Binh, well known for its natural limestone formations called Tam Coc and quiet back-roads, perfect for cycling.

The third stop was the central coast town of Hue:

The fourth was the beach-town of Nha Trang:

And my final stop, Ho Chi Minh City:

I spent the second half of my holiday in Cambodia, where I met up with an old friend of mine from Japan. Apart from being a fantastic travel companion, it was nice to see Angkor with someone that you already know.

My first stop was Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Located about 6 hours by bus from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. I was to spend a couple of days there before meeting Mark in Siem Reap, the “gateway” to Angkor.

Phnom Penh is a busy little city with a notorious reputation for violent crime and all manner of unsavoury activity. Like many travel related rumours, I found this to be completely untrue (and I got to mucking around some pretty dodgy areas, alone at night and didn’t feel too unsafe).

My first stop in the city was the Tuol Sleng Museum and Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. Formerly Tuol Svay Prey High School, Tuol Sleng was converted into Security Prison 21 (S-21) by Pol Pot’s security forces in 1975. It was the largest detention and torture centre in the country at the time and nearly all of the prisoners at the facility were tortured and transported to the Killing Fields for extermination. The rusty metal beds and black and white photos of victims on said beds (you could match the patterns on the head/foot boards to the ones in the photos) were a horrifying reminder of Cambodia’s past and the dark side of us all.

Ankle irons used to chain detainees to bed frames and each other

The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek were an equally grim reminder, featuring a beautifully constructed stupa housing some 9000 human skulls. Most of the skulls exhibited some manner of blunt force trauma; a convenient Khmer Rouge killing tactic to save expensive bullets. It is estimated that 17,000 people were killed here between 1975 and1978. Excavation of the mass graves still continues.

After this sober reminder of humanity at its worst, I took a stroll through Psar Tuol Tom Pong or “The Russian Market” and headed back to my part of the city for dinner and sleep.

The next day I took a nice, leisurely stroll through the Royal Palace, home to the internationally renowned Silver Pagoda, so named for its floor – covered with five tonnes of silver tiles. The 90 kilo, solid gold, life-size standing Buddha (crusted in 2086 diamonds including one weighing in at 25 carats) and the smaller but no less impressive jade Buddha, carved from an enormous chunk of (you guessed it) jade, were also impressive. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed inside, so you’ll have to trust me when I say that they kick much ass.

The Royal Palace

One of the many flowering plants around the complex

My next stop was the national museum with its fantastic collection of Angkor period art (again, no photos allowed) and a stroll around Wat Phnom.

The next day I was off again to Siem Reap for 7 days of fabulous Angkor goodness.

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel terribly compelled to keep comprehensive logs of temples/places we visited in Siem Reap, so I’m going to try something new on this blog for multiple photos – a slide show. Click the thumbnails below the gallery photo to select a particular photo or just sit back and watch them go by.

As you can see, many of the temples had vastly different architectural styles and construction.

Cambodia offered more than beautiful temples, the Khmer people were friendly, gorgeous individuals:

And the colours and textures from markets to homes was at times overwhelming:

All in all it was a fantastic holiday and I would certainly encourage those who can, to travel to Vietnam and Cambodia – it is well worth it.

“I got it from a Drop Bear”.

The elusive Drop Bear claims another victim

This post marks the first of two really, really long posts covering events that span one month – one spent with a good friend of mine who came to Sydney to visit and another from my month in Vietnam and Cambodia.  Let’s get it on!

In Australia, there is a nation-wide inside joke regarding a fictional marsupial called a “Drop Bear” that is said to haunt the forests of Australia, ready to drop on and savagely maul unsuspecting victims below.  Being the gullible dork that I am, I fell for the story for about a week.  However, the experience made me increasingly keen on getting a fellow foreigner in on the hilarity and shame of the Drop Bear.  Enter my friend Nick, a fellow Denverite visiting me for a month, who fortunately, has a pretty established sense of irony and humour so caught on to the joke quickly.  From then on it became an ongoing battle to see who can use the Drop Bear myth to outwit the other.  This leads to all sorts of silly and sometimes, completely retarded comments to each other (Nick and I act like 9 year-olds?  NO!), especially in public where our braying laughter can be heard by all of Sydney.  This was especially true at the first day celebrations for Sydney Festival 2009 – a month long extravaganza of music, performance and free stuff celebrating all that kicks ass in Sydney, the highlight of which, was hearing a song that (we thought) went like this:

I didn’t get it from the Lord,
But I know where I got it from.
I didn’t get it from the Lord,
I got it from a Drop Bear.

And peeing of the pants soon ensued.  No worries though, the Drop Bear and subsequent retardation from Nick and I is not the only reason for this post – I have cool pictures too.

As I mentioned before, we happened to be in the city on the opening night for the Sydney Festival and were able to catch all sorts of good stuff:

like some capoeira

and the "Break Dancing" these kids are into now a days.

Nick made an interesting point on something that I was picking up on after watching the breakers dance after the Capoeira group – both breaking and Capoeira utilise near identical moves to express all manner of feelings, emotions and other social goodies.  What was really interesting to me watching these two groups perform back to back were the ways that both groups (breaking and Capoeira – not the two groups of performers) share a common sort of social viewpoint that helped to create and maintain the individual forms, while enabling them to be brought to a larger audience.

At any rate, after more beer we walked a couple of blocks to another stage featuring all manner of dance troupes and routines.  It was pretty much “super bad ass”.

Stilts = the sex.

The final battle for $2000

Yoga as a form of dance? Absolutely!

Because as most of you are well aware, there are few things in life I love more then watching bodies in motion.

Speaking of music, Nick (the Buddy) is “in” with Public Enemy and was able to get us backstage for both the Newcastle and Sydney shows.  Granted, this is my first time experiencing Public Enemy live and my first time experiencing the mythical backstage.  Chuck D was very friendly and terribly intelligent, as was his wife Gayle.

Fight the power!

Flav wails on the drums

Apart from being a fantastic live show, we were offered the opportunity to ride from Newcastle back to Sydney on their tour bus.  We did.  It rocked your world.

As expected, we spent a good deal of time wandering around Sydney, doing things like a harbour tour:

Walked along the harbour bridge:

Wander around the Sydney Opera House:

And muck around the city:

That’s it (thankfully!) for now, but stay tuned for the Vietnam/Cambodia post in a couple of days.