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verushka70So I was procrastinating my paper on cervical cancer at school and surfing news headlines. To summarize what I read, dogs can detect cancer by sniffing your breath, the face-transplant recipient is using her new lips to start smoking (which will likely cause the new tissue to die), the Bush admin wants Google to reveal what one million Google users searched for with the search engine, and people are getting RFID enabled computer chips implanted in their hands so they can unlock their doors and enter passwords for their email simply by waving a hand.
It's a bizarre yet entertaining world in which we live. But the dogs give me hope. (That, and the future reward I will give myself after I finish nursing school, which will be a return trip to Amsterdam.) I wonder if cats could similarly sniff out cancer. I bet they could -- if you could train them....
"Can your pet sniff out cancer?
Dogs can detect the disease by smelling breath samples, study finds"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10822627/
I suppose it stands to reason. Dogs can find a microscopic single crumb of a cookie in high-pile carpet, let alone know a tsunami or earthquake is coming before one hits. Years ago our dogs woke my mother and I in the middle of the night when a building two blocks away was burning and they smelled the smoke -- an hour before there was any red glow in the night sky, let alone leaping flames. We didn't realize what was driving them so nuts until we saw the red glow and then heard the sirens. All that time, we were looking inside the house for the problem.
So it turns out, all this medical technology, and what we really needed were... dogs. Well, I sure as hell would rather have a dog sniff my breath than flatten my breasts in a mammography machine. shudder
Continuing the theme of "we don't know what's good for us", I give you:
"Face transplant patient uses new lips to smoke
Doctors fear habit will interfere with healing, raise risk of tissue
rejection"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10912182/
Now, I am an ex-smoker. And sometimes I like to smell the smell of smokers on them, even though I now hate when my own clothes reek of smoke after being at a party or bar, but the second-hand-smoker-smell just reminds me of (1) when I was a smoker (in a nostalgic "this is bad for me but I like it" kind of way, and (2) an ex-lover of many moons ago who smoked (literally and figuratively -- eh, right size, right fit, right skills. No I was not Goldicocks, to borrow a term from Sex And The City, but I appreciated the way everything except his emotional state was "just right".)
But even I wouldn't christen my newly transplanted lips by starting smoking with them again. Although I can certainly relate to the agonizign nic-fits the face-transplant recipient must have been having while she had no mouth with which to smoke. Quitting smoking cold turkey is bad enough, but against your will, it's just horrific. The face transplant woman was probably thinking, Damn, all that time without lips, I was dying for a smoke! (And no, I'm not joking... I'm an ex-smoker, but I'll always be a nicotine addict... that drug's hooks are in me for good, I fear.) Except really she was thinking, Pour tellement longtemps sans lèvres j'ai voulu une cigarette intensément.
(Translation brought to you courtesy of http://babelfish.altavista.com/) Although I have no way of knowing if that is correct French, or not.
Then there is
"Feds seek Google records in pornography probe
Bush administration wants details of what users look for with search engine"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10925344/
Okay, this is unnecessary. I saw the News Hour with Jim Lehrer earlier and the Justice Dept. isn't even asking for those records in an effort to investigate a crime; they just want a corporation to cough up a bunch of data they have so the Justice Dept. can analyze it and make a case for their increased surveillance of our 'net browsing habits. Fuck that. Yet more invasion of our privacy.
But then, if I wanted the world to be able to get records of the bizarre things I've searched on the 'net, I would've signed up with Google... and my Hotmail account(s) would have my actual name and real birthdate.
Yes, I am a disinformer. For sport, I like to give incorrect information in all kinds of situations... such as online. (Except purchasing stuff from Amazon... I did grudgingly give them my info years ago, through the lifespans of about 3 credit/debit cards ... so sue me, I love books.)
I disinform on principle, but it can also be for sport! Try it yourself everywhere you go! Lie in all fields when creating your free email accounts at Hotmail and Yahoo. (Fraser would call it "prevaricating" -- wouldn't he?) Wherever possible, choose the field "Other." Report yourself to be the gender opposite your true gender. Say you're very old or very young -- unless you really are, in which case, say you're middle-aged. Pay with cash wherever possible. And when the store clerk or cashier asks for your phone number or zip code, make one up or use an old one. I give my old apartments' zip codes... friends' zip codes... zip codes of cities I've visited...
DISINFORM THEM, people. They don't need your zip or phone number (in real stores) or your real name or gender (online) for "marketing purposes." They only need accurate info from you when you are buying something with a credit card traceable back to you. So pay cash everywhere (get it with your debit or credit card!) and lie, lie, lie. Or say no, no, no -- but I prefer the lying, because it monkey-wrenches their marketing machine (and would monkey-wrench the Justice Dept.'s "profiling" of net users.) To paraphrase a magnet on my fridge, I refuse to give corporations better ways to get me to spend money I don't have, on shit I don't need, to impress people I don't even like; I'd like to make it harder for them to market to me because, as Joe Dick would say, that's the kind of cunt-rary person I am. :)
Yay...! (And yes I do prefer the old-fashioned :) to the smiley icons. I just ...like 'em.)
And finally, there's this:
"Computer chips get under skin of enthusiasts
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/01/09/chip.implants.reut/
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Forgetting computer passwords is an everyday source
of frustration, but a solution may literally be at hand -- in the form of
computer chip implants."
I foresee future crimes: criminals hacking off people's fingers not to get their rings, but to get their RFID chips -- which can then be used to open their homes and rob them, or simply held for ransom because of the data or valuables that will be accessible to anyone possessing the RFID chip. CEOs and CIOs will have their fingers hacked off and stolen for purposes of industrial/technological/intellectual property espionage.
Not to mention the Clockwork-Orange-esque (and Buffy-esque, ala enchipped Spike) possibilities of implanting people with chips to punish them or control them. But, hey, now the chances of making someone your personal sex robot without spending all that money on a full-size, life-like, posable latex sex doll like those they showed on Real Sex on HBO twice are much greater. Or, even better (worse), the opportunities for international sex slave traffickers to control their "merchandise" have just been expanded tremendously.
I am reminded of a short story, which I think was by Katherine Dunne (author of Geek Love), and I think was in an anthology of weird erotic stories (if I remember correctly) about an unpleasant woman whose futuristic life-size, fully-endowed, fully fuctional sex bot (which had "imprinted" on her, like a sexual baby bird, the better to service her) committed suicide by jumping out her high-rise window when she went out and bought a newer model with upgraded "features." I remember being touched yet offended by the story, because the portrayal of the overweight woman seemed to suggest she bought a sex toy because she couldn't get a real man.
Which, Ms. Dunne, is very inaccurate. Us chunkstresses can easily get a man if we want to. In fact, lots of men actually prefer us chunkstresses. A friend of mine (male, het) described Rachel McAdams as "anorexic" and her smile "like The Joker's" a couple weeks ago when we went to see a double feature of 40 Year Old Virgin and Wedding Crashers at the Brew & View (http://www.brewview.com/). (He also thinks his yoga instructor, who I've met, is "scrawny" -- but to most TV audiences, she would be "normal.")
I think the whole "get a man"/"can't get a man" thing is dependent on confidence and comfortableness with yourself. If you loathe yourself, it's hard to "get a man" because men can sense it. I've basically been dating for the last 20 years and I always noticed that when I was really desperately lonely, I could never find anyone to date, let alone get involved with. But when I calmed down and got absorbed in getting on with my life, suddenly they were coming out of the woodwork. I think if you're relatively fond of yourself (not narcissistically self-absorbed, but also not full of self-loathing), you can easily get a man if you try. I've seen large women who were bubbly and fun and never without a man, and I've seen model-thin, "perfect" women who couldn't get or keep a man if their lives depended on it. Although I think mainly because they truly believed their lives depended on it, as if they were nothing without a man.
And if you're reasonably aware of your good points and bad points, you can be a lot less defensive when people do wacky things, because you realize it's their shit, not yours, and has nothing to do with you. So that helps you not only get a man, but remain calm when he inevitably starts acting out, which usually happens when he realizes that he likes you so much he is considering curtailing his freedom as a single man, and he freaks out.
So instead of freaking out yourself when he does, and trying to hunt him down, you pull back, the man is all "Hey, I'm seeing less of her... because I blew her off, but what if she found someone else while I was freaking out and proving I didn't need her? I better go find out what she is up to!" And then you just sweetly don't ask the stupid things he did while he was away because you really don't want to know, but you keep insisting on condoms. Er, well, anyway, that seems like how it tends to go... TMI, I guess...
But getting back to the fat-chick thing -- well, apparently I do not qualify as "BBW". I'm too "thin" to be a BBW. (So I've been told by men who are into BBWs.) But I need to lose (according to my doctor) about 75 lbs. Of course, she wanted me to be a weight I haven't been since I was about 17. Personally, I would rather be a weight that is about 20 lbs heavier than what she suggested, so really I only "have to" lose about 55 lbs. At any rate, I've lost some, but I am still quite chunky, although I'm told that my figure hides my weight well (or so a Weight Watchers leader told me). Then I started nursing school, stopped losing weight, stopped exercising regularly, and put about 10 lbs back on...
Anyway, I noticed when I took belly dance classes in the summer that you're actually better at belly dancing if you're chunky. Skinny chicks have nothing to jiggle. But us chunkstresses are built for belly dancing. It's the only type of movement, athletic or social, that I can think of, where the purpose is to jiggle what you've got. Maybe that's why it's so sensual. Maybe that's why, when I practiced my routine for him, my then-boyfriend got very excited, and wanted to have sex immediately, and he couldn't keep his hands off me until we did. (Of course, being a chick, I put him through all the foreplay moves first before we "got down to it." Got to control your man, sometimes -- otherwise, the sex is all about him, and that's not so much fun for me, and I am all about the equal-opportunity-fun, which inevitably means I go first and he knows his turn will come. Ahem.)
Veering back to the original topics... to recap the news I discovered while procrastinating, dogs can detect cancer by sniffing your breath. The current evil administration wants Google to cough up online search records of its users, to invade our privacy, and not even in the investigation or prosecution of a crime. The French woman who got a face transplant is about to deaden and possibly kill her new facial tissue by using her new lips to start smoking again. And people can now be tagged like wildlife or domestic pets, but they'll happily implant RFID chips in themselves just so they can unlock their front doors or open their email securely simply by waving their hand.
What is this world coming to?
My question is -- if you read the computer chip article -- does anyone who lives in a geographical area with real winter -- which is to say, cold, snow, bitterly cold wind -- ever get locked out of their house naked? (Am I alone in thinking that only a man could envision a worst case scenario where you get locked out of your house naked without your keys -- and you wave your RFID-enchipped hand in front of your door to get back in?)
And, if you did get locked out of your house naked without your keys -- what will you do if your power goes out and the RFID enabled lock on your door won't respond to the RFID chip in your hand because it's got no juice?
Like I said, the cancer-sniffing dogs give me hope. That, and the enlightened attitudes of the people in the Netherlands.
Oh, and look. A BBM LJ site. http://community.livejournal.com/wranglers/
And I also altered the look of my LJ. Somewhat.
I am the best procrastinator in the world who still manages to get As and Bs in her classes and get along in the world. My apartment, however, is an unholy mess.
And, hey. I might participate in NaNoWriMo in 2006. (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) Just because I am crazy. Like starting my 2nd year of nursing school in August 2006 won't be hard enough. I love a challenge. Well, that's not true. I love certain kinds of challenges... others make me want to lie down and take a nap.
And now, before I begin my research paper on cervical cancer for my Med/Surg class, I will go back and edit some of my previous entries, just so I can add some new pictures of CKR and Hugh Dillon I just uploaded, and which were modified for LJ-useability in my continuing efforts to procrastinate.
Yay...
:)
It's a bizarre yet entertaining world in which we live. But the dogs give me hope. (That, and the future reward I will give myself after I finish nursing school, which will be a return trip to Amsterdam.) I wonder if cats could similarly sniff out cancer. I bet they could -- if you could train them....
"Can your pet sniff out cancer?
Dogs can detect the disease by smelling breath samples, study finds"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10822627/
I suppose it stands to reason. Dogs can find a microscopic single crumb of a cookie in high-pile carpet, let alone know a tsunami or earthquake is coming before one hits. Years ago our dogs woke my mother and I in the middle of the night when a building two blocks away was burning and they smelled the smoke -- an hour before there was any red glow in the night sky, let alone leaping flames. We didn't realize what was driving them so nuts until we saw the red glow and then heard the sirens. All that time, we were looking inside the house for the problem.
So it turns out, all this medical technology, and what we really needed were... dogs. Well, I sure as hell would rather have a dog sniff my breath than flatten my breasts in a mammography machine. shudder
Continuing the theme of "we don't know what's good for us", I give you:
"Face transplant patient uses new lips to smoke
Doctors fear habit will interfere with healing, raise risk of tissue
rejection"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10912182/
Now, I am an ex-smoker. And sometimes I like to smell the smell of smokers on them, even though I now hate when my own clothes reek of smoke after being at a party or bar, but the second-hand-smoker-smell just reminds me of (1) when I was a smoker (in a nostalgic "this is bad for me but I like it" kind of way, and (2) an ex-lover of many moons ago who smoked (literally and figuratively -- eh, right size, right fit, right skills. No I was not Goldicocks, to borrow a term from Sex And The City, but I appreciated the way everything except his emotional state was "just right".)
But even I wouldn't christen my newly transplanted lips by starting smoking with them again. Although I can certainly relate to the agonizign nic-fits the face-transplant recipient must have been having while she had no mouth with which to smoke. Quitting smoking cold turkey is bad enough, but against your will, it's just horrific. The face transplant woman was probably thinking, Damn, all that time without lips, I was dying for a smoke! (And no, I'm not joking... I'm an ex-smoker, but I'll always be a nicotine addict... that drug's hooks are in me for good, I fear.) Except really she was thinking, Pour tellement longtemps sans lèvres j'ai voulu une cigarette intensément.
(Translation brought to you courtesy of http://babelfish.altavista.com/) Although I have no way of knowing if that is correct French, or not.
Then there is
"Feds seek Google records in pornography probe
Bush administration wants details of what users look for with search engine"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10925344/
Okay, this is unnecessary. I saw the News Hour with Jim Lehrer earlier and the Justice Dept. isn't even asking for those records in an effort to investigate a crime; they just want a corporation to cough up a bunch of data they have so the Justice Dept. can analyze it and make a case for their increased surveillance of our 'net browsing habits. Fuck that. Yet more invasion of our privacy.
But then, if I wanted the world to be able to get records of the bizarre things I've searched on the 'net, I would've signed up with Google... and my Hotmail account(s) would have my actual name and real birthdate.
Yes, I am a disinformer. For sport, I like to give incorrect information in all kinds of situations... such as online. (Except purchasing stuff from Amazon... I did grudgingly give them my info years ago, through the lifespans of about 3 credit/debit cards ... so sue me, I love books.)
I disinform on principle, but it can also be for sport! Try it yourself everywhere you go! Lie in all fields when creating your free email accounts at Hotmail and Yahoo. (Fraser would call it "prevaricating" -- wouldn't he?) Wherever possible, choose the field "Other." Report yourself to be the gender opposite your true gender. Say you're very old or very young -- unless you really are, in which case, say you're middle-aged. Pay with cash wherever possible. And when the store clerk or cashier asks for your phone number or zip code, make one up or use an old one. I give my old apartments' zip codes... friends' zip codes... zip codes of cities I've visited...
DISINFORM THEM, people. They don't need your zip or phone number (in real stores) or your real name or gender (online) for "marketing purposes." They only need accurate info from you when you are buying something with a credit card traceable back to you. So pay cash everywhere (get it with your debit or credit card!) and lie, lie, lie. Or say no, no, no -- but I prefer the lying, because it monkey-wrenches their marketing machine (and would monkey-wrench the Justice Dept.'s "profiling" of net users.) To paraphrase a magnet on my fridge, I refuse to give corporations better ways to get me to spend money I don't have, on shit I don't need, to impress people I don't even like; I'd like to make it harder for them to market to me because, as Joe Dick would say, that's the kind of cunt-rary person I am. :)
Yay...! (And yes I do prefer the old-fashioned :) to the smiley icons. I just ...like 'em.)
And finally, there's this:
"Computer chips get under skin of enthusiasts
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/01/09/chip.implants.reut/
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Forgetting computer passwords is an everyday source
of frustration, but a solution may literally be at hand -- in the form of
computer chip implants."
I foresee future crimes: criminals hacking off people's fingers not to get their rings, but to get their RFID chips -- which can then be used to open their homes and rob them, or simply held for ransom because of the data or valuables that will be accessible to anyone possessing the RFID chip. CEOs and CIOs will have their fingers hacked off and stolen for purposes of industrial/technological/intellectual property espionage.
Not to mention the Clockwork-Orange-esque (and Buffy-esque, ala enchipped Spike) possibilities of implanting people with chips to punish them or control them. But, hey, now the chances of making someone your personal sex robot without spending all that money on a full-size, life-like, posable latex sex doll like those they showed on Real Sex on HBO twice are much greater. Or, even better (worse), the opportunities for international sex slave traffickers to control their "merchandise" have just been expanded tremendously.
I am reminded of a short story, which I think was by Katherine Dunne (author of Geek Love), and I think was in an anthology of weird erotic stories (if I remember correctly) about an unpleasant woman whose futuristic life-size, fully-endowed, fully fuctional sex bot (which had "imprinted" on her, like a sexual baby bird, the better to service her) committed suicide by jumping out her high-rise window when she went out and bought a newer model with upgraded "features." I remember being touched yet offended by the story, because the portrayal of the overweight woman seemed to suggest she bought a sex toy because she couldn't get a real man.
Which, Ms. Dunne, is very inaccurate. Us chunkstresses can easily get a man if we want to. In fact, lots of men actually prefer us chunkstresses. A friend of mine (male, het) described Rachel McAdams as "anorexic" and her smile "like The Joker's" a couple weeks ago when we went to see a double feature of 40 Year Old Virgin and Wedding Crashers at the Brew & View (http://www.brewview.com/). (He also thinks his yoga instructor, who I've met, is "scrawny" -- but to most TV audiences, she would be "normal.")
I think the whole "get a man"/"can't get a man" thing is dependent on confidence and comfortableness with yourself. If you loathe yourself, it's hard to "get a man" because men can sense it. I've basically been dating for the last 20 years and I always noticed that when I was really desperately lonely, I could never find anyone to date, let alone get involved with. But when I calmed down and got absorbed in getting on with my life, suddenly they were coming out of the woodwork. I think if you're relatively fond of yourself (not narcissistically self-absorbed, but also not full of self-loathing), you can easily get a man if you try. I've seen large women who were bubbly and fun and never without a man, and I've seen model-thin, "perfect" women who couldn't get or keep a man if their lives depended on it. Although I think mainly because they truly believed their lives depended on it, as if they were nothing without a man.
And if you're reasonably aware of your good points and bad points, you can be a lot less defensive when people do wacky things, because you realize it's their shit, not yours, and has nothing to do with you. So that helps you not only get a man, but remain calm when he inevitably starts acting out, which usually happens when he realizes that he likes you so much he is considering curtailing his freedom as a single man, and he freaks out.
So instead of freaking out yourself when he does, and trying to hunt him down, you pull back, the man is all "Hey, I'm seeing less of her... because I blew her off, but what if she found someone else while I was freaking out and proving I didn't need her? I better go find out what she is up to!" And then you just sweetly don't ask the stupid things he did while he was away because you really don't want to know, but you keep insisting on condoms. Er, well, anyway, that seems like how it tends to go... TMI, I guess...
But getting back to the fat-chick thing -- well, apparently I do not qualify as "BBW". I'm too "thin" to be a BBW. (So I've been told by men who are into BBWs.) But I need to lose (according to my doctor) about 75 lbs. Of course, she wanted me to be a weight I haven't been since I was about 17. Personally, I would rather be a weight that is about 20 lbs heavier than what she suggested, so really I only "have to" lose about 55 lbs. At any rate, I've lost some, but I am still quite chunky, although I'm told that my figure hides my weight well (or so a Weight Watchers leader told me). Then I started nursing school, stopped losing weight, stopped exercising regularly, and put about 10 lbs back on...
Anyway, I noticed when I took belly dance classes in the summer that you're actually better at belly dancing if you're chunky. Skinny chicks have nothing to jiggle. But us chunkstresses are built for belly dancing. It's the only type of movement, athletic or social, that I can think of, where the purpose is to jiggle what you've got. Maybe that's why it's so sensual. Maybe that's why, when I practiced my routine for him, my then-boyfriend got very excited, and wanted to have sex immediately, and he couldn't keep his hands off me until we did. (Of course, being a chick, I put him through all the foreplay moves first before we "got down to it." Got to control your man, sometimes -- otherwise, the sex is all about him, and that's not so much fun for me, and I am all about the equal-opportunity-fun, which inevitably means I go first and he knows his turn will come. Ahem.)
Veering back to the original topics... to recap the news I discovered while procrastinating, dogs can detect cancer by sniffing your breath. The current evil administration wants Google to cough up online search records of its users, to invade our privacy, and not even in the investigation or prosecution of a crime. The French woman who got a face transplant is about to deaden and possibly kill her new facial tissue by using her new lips to start smoking again. And people can now be tagged like wildlife or domestic pets, but they'll happily implant RFID chips in themselves just so they can unlock their front doors or open their email securely simply by waving their hand.
What is this world coming to?
My question is -- if you read the computer chip article -- does anyone who lives in a geographical area with real winter -- which is to say, cold, snow, bitterly cold wind -- ever get locked out of their house naked? (Am I alone in thinking that only a man could envision a worst case scenario where you get locked out of your house naked without your keys -- and you wave your RFID-enchipped hand in front of your door to get back in?)
And, if you did get locked out of your house naked without your keys -- what will you do if your power goes out and the RFID enabled lock on your door won't respond to the RFID chip in your hand because it's got no juice?
Like I said, the cancer-sniffing dogs give me hope. That, and the enlightened attitudes of the people in the Netherlands.
Oh, and look. A BBM LJ site. http://community.livejournal.com/wranglers/
And I also altered the look of my LJ. Somewhat.
I am the best procrastinator in the world who still manages to get As and Bs in her classes and get along in the world. My apartment, however, is an unholy mess.
And, hey. I might participate in NaNoWriMo in 2006. (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) Just because I am crazy. Like starting my 2nd year of nursing school in August 2006 won't be hard enough. I love a challenge. Well, that's not true. I love certain kinds of challenges... others make me want to lie down and take a nap.
And now, before I begin my research paper on cervical cancer for my Med/Surg class, I will go back and edit some of my previous entries, just so I can add some new pictures of CKR and Hugh Dillon I just uploaded, and which were modified for LJ-useability in my continuing efforts to procrastinate.
Yay...
:)