Highlight reel, beginning of May

Getting my blue belt

I got my blue belt.

From Felicia Oh.

I cried. A lot.

We've had a great weekend. The women's seminar today was pretty special. At the end Elliott thanked everybody for coming, and announced that Felicia would be back much more often, and that there would be a new relationship between Felicia and the kimonogirls. Then he said, "I think that Felicia has something to say." Felicia started talking about how she wouldn't be here in Toronto without me, and said that she had been very happy to meet and train with me. She talked about how she hadn't had the opportunity to get to know any of the other kimonogirls, but that she knew me and my jiu-jitsu, and that she had discussed it with Elliott and...

Then she pulled a blue belt out of her bag. I put my hands to my face and started crying. I think I fell down, too. I never expected it to happen, but there is absolutely nobody I would rather have gotten my belt from than Felicia, and nowhere I would rather have gotten it than right there with the kimonogirls. The next ten minutes are a complete blur, with people hugging me and kissing me and congratulating me, and I just sat there bawling like a little kid.

I am Felicia's third blue belt and the kimonogirls' first. There are other people who deserve it more than I do, but I am still honoured and grateful.

I am a NAGA grappling world champion.

The buttloads of snow
Make me miss California
I mean, what the fuck?

I won gold in no-gi and silver in gi. Won all matches by submission in about a minute except for the gi finals, which I lost by triangle choke to a woman who was about 200 times better than any white belt I've ever rolled with. :)

Awesome weekend. And we did the 10th Planet half guard stuff tonight, too, so I got to do more Electric Chairs! w00t!

I don't even know where to start telling you about it. I got very very little sleep and lots of what the kids today are calling "fuckin' sick pothead jiu-jitsu, yo". I knew most of the stuff he taught (it was super basic half guard (lockdown, whip up, old school, electric chair, some stoner control stuff) and rubber guard (the mission control to omoplata or Twister Side sequence) but I got lots of tune-up details. Including how to apply better Electric Chairs. Muahaha.

I got to roll with some of it tonight and my rubber guard was tighter than it's ever been. I couldn't do anything besides using retard and crackhead to try to tap him with a Bayev Bite or collarbone submission, though, because the guy I was training with outweighed me by 70 lbs and I couldn't get my legs around his shoulders. Hehe.

Man, this is some funky shit. Break it down for me, fellas:

What: Party with special guest Eddie Bravo!
When: 16 December 2007, 8pm-1am.
Why: To celebrate Toronto jiu-jitsu
Where: Diesel Playhouse, 56 Blue Jays Way, Toronto
Who: YOU!

Hi Friends,
OpenMat BJJ & MMA is VERY happy to announce that in addition to our highly anticipated no gi seminar with BJJ superstar and masterming Eddie "The Twister" Bravo, we are going to be hosting a free party open to all members of the Canadian BJJ community!

It's so easy for us to get lost in the "my team, your team" mentality, but what we ALL have in common is that our lives have been transformed for the better by this beautiful art we love. Come celebrate this magic called Jiu-Jitsu with your fellow BJJers, and a man who has given his life to BJJ and shown us that if we believe in ourselves, we can achieve anything!

There will be food and drinks, music, fight videos, a book signing(!) and door prizes courtesy of our generous sponsors FightPlanet, Pound4Pound, CrossFit Toronto and Diesel Playouse!

The party will be held at Diesel Playhouse (a great spot to check out the UFC!) – 56 Blue Jays Way, a few blocks South-East of King and Spadina.

Anyone interested in sponsoring the event, contact Elliott at OpenMat – classes@openmat.ca.

More info and announcements coming soon. See you off the mat!

Elliott

OpenMat BJJ & MMA

I'm happy to be coming home to my gang but I'm sad to be leaving. :(

I was talking to Felicia earlier and she said that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to train together on Friday morning if I had to catch a flight at LAX in the afternoon, so we moved our private session to Thursday morning. If you want to read about that session then you can check http://tapgrrl.livejournal.com for all of the latest Alaina BJJ news. We hung around for an hour or so afterwards, rolling and chatting, and then Felicia went off to train with her high school wrestling team. I grabbed some food and sat in a Starbucks writing down my notes.

I got back to BJMUTA around 4pm and did my own Crossfit workout (knocked 2:35 off of my previous time!), then watched an adorable kid's wrestling class. One girl there was smoking the boys with takedown after takedown. It was awesome.

I watched a couple of UFCs (including the fight where Nate Quarry knocked Shonie Carter senseless) with two members of the BJMUTA fight team and Big John McCarthy himself. Didn't talk to him or anything, but he hung out by the counter at the front.

Felicia showed up at 6 and we chatted for an hour or so, then she asked if i wanted to meet John.

I said, "hey, sure."

So she took me back to his office and introduced me as the girl from Toronto who was training for a week. We sat around and talked about MMA in Ontario, athletic commissions, and staph infections. (He had a chunk taken out of his own hip because of staph, and we looked at the pictures of Kevin Randleman's narsty spots.) He also introduced me to Monte Cox, "the CEO of M-1, where Fedor just signed."

"And Randy, too!" I said.

Monte laughed, and John said, "yeah, but we don't talk to him about that."

It was a surreal experience.

Anyway, Felicia and I rolled for about ten minutes and she tapped me about twenty times, with both of us laughing like idiots the whole time. Then we took the attached picture, had a big hug, and I cried as I left to go back to Hollywood.

I met Yani at Legends just before Eddie's class, where we drilled what we'd been drilling earlier in the week, plus learned a twister setup from the turtle. We rolled HARD for about 40 minutes at the end of class, and several of the more advanced people took time to show me a few techniques and give me pointers. The best match of the night, in my opinion, was Yani versus the last guy he rolled with - it was highly technical and back and forth the whole time. I wish I'd gotten it on video.

After class Eddie gave me a big hug, told me he was happy I came, and said I moved like I had been training for a couple of years, which as you can imagine made me giddy like a little girl.

More details later. Have to catch my flight. Miss you all! Can't wait to see you tomorrow!

- A

So! Didn't update yesterday. You get two days for the price of one in this update. (Part of this I'm copying and pasting from my LiveJournal.)

I did the noon class at 10th Planet yesterday. Eddie's a cool guy and a great teacher, and everybody in class was really nice. We worked half guard sweeps, a kimura from side control, and a couple of moves from the Dogfight, including my favourite flashy submission, the Powder Keg. During class we took a break to stand around the computer at the front of Legends and watch this video. Eddie was stoned, of course, so he felt he had to explain to us what was happening in the video. Because the plot was so complicated, you see. And he walked around for the rest of the class, saying, "smokin' weed all DAY. Weed."

But first! I had a private lesson with Scott Epstein. We reviewed rubber guard transitions and some submissions. He complimented my "crazy flexibility", but only after I broke his posture (on his instruction) and he announced to the camera crew, "uh, there's a tit in my face." It should offend me but just thinking about it cracks me up.

So, yeah, the whole session with Scott was filmed by a crew of people, eight strong (including two sound guys, two cameramen, one director, and three random assistants talking into cell phones), because Scott is going to be featured on the show TapouT. After we were done, one of the assistants made me sign a release and took my picture with a Polaroid instant camera. "Did that fall out of the '80s?" I asked the guy.

One approach I thought was really useful was drilling starting from a very bad position; in yesterday's case it was from somebody sitting on your head with a full kimura grip on your arm. The top person tries to tap the bottom person, and the bottom person tries to escape, reguard or tap the top person. I don't think I ever tapped anybody, but I did manage to re-guard a couple of guys and sweep somebody into Spider Web and fight to break his defense. I also got the opportunity to crawl all over people to try to get kimuras and armbars when they wouldn't give them to me. The guys were usually much, much stronger than me, so they would buck me off and I repeatedly got into a crazy position, face down on top of somebody, still holding with a kimura grip, and using my forehead on the mat to try to give myself the leverage to shove my other foot into their abdomen to get an armbar. I imagined it must be something like how Elliott looked last Thursday night when he was on my back, going all Chewbacca on me. It made me laugh myself silly. In fact, the mental image is still making me laugh. We rolled for a few minutes at the end, too. Everybody warned me, but the guys (and they are all guys) at 10th Planet are really intense, even when they're being nice. I eventually called it a day after a black belt had me in north-south and I almost neck cranked myself trying to escape like I tried on Brett last week.

Yani slept through the lunchtime class yesterday, so after it was done I called him and we went for food. We had a great chat - he is SUCH a nice guy. He went off to go surfing, and I came back to take a nap, and then woke up to do laundry. Even with lots of jiu-jitsu clothes, a week's worth of twice-a-day training means you have to do laundry every couple of days. We met up again for the evening class at 10th Planet. It was Yani's first day back after his three week concussion-imposed layoff, so he rolled lightly with a chiropractor and I didn't roll at all.

This morning I had another private with Felicia, which I've written up at http://tapgrrl.livejournal.com. I'm finding my training with her way more useful than 10th Planet (though 10th Planet is hella fun, and the rolling is great experience, so I've decided to spend tomorrow training with her, too. Just waiting for her to call me to let me know what time works for her - morning or afternoon. If it's afternoon, I'll do the morning class at 10th Planet and spend the afternoon and evening in Valencia. If it's morning, I have a tough call to make - do I bother coming back for the 10th Planet class, or do I do Felicia's evening no gi class and try to make it back for the second half of Eddie's?

Tonight Yani and I were going to watch Conor Hune's MMA fight in Irvine, but Google Maps tells us that it's "up to 2 hours and 40 minutes" in traffic, so we've decided against it. I think I might walk around Hollywood instead. It's Halloween, which is apparently a huge holiday here. I've already seen one guy in a Beavis mask, ordering coffee at a Starbucks in a Beavis voice.

- A

I met Felicia at the gym in Valencia at 10:30. We rolled for about 15 minutes ("rolled" meant she pretty much held still to see what I would do) and after we were done she said, "Well? What did you think?"

I paused, thought about it, and in my most excited "the New Kids on the Block are coming to my town!" voice I said, "OH MY GOD I GOT TO ROLL WITH FELICIA OH!!!" And then I said, "I'm sorry, I'll bet that was a little embarrassing." She agreed, but I said, "you tapped Megumi Fuji. You can deal with a little effusive praise." I asked her if we could to it again, but next time if she could try to tap me so I could see what she was doing. I didn't know what I was asking for. Heh.

The rest of the private lesson wasn't about techniques, but rather, she took apart my rolling and gave me little things to do and pay attention to in my transitions and positioning. It was more about what you can do when the setup for something doesn't quite work: what the bare essentials of some movements are, and what you have to do to make those bare essentials into something useful.

After we were done, Felicia had to leave to train with a high school wrestling team (!), so I came back to Hollywood, grabbed my stuff, had lunch at a Whole Foods while watching the largest parade of fake breasts since Pride, and drove back to Valencia where I spent my afternoon in a Starbucks. I got a call from Scott Epstein, one of Eddie Bravo's brown belts who I'm doing a private with, and he asked me if it was okay if we were to be filmed for a television show. ?? I also heard from Yani - I'm meeting him at the 10th Planet morning class and then we're going to go for lunch.

Anyhoo, at 5pm I did a boxing class, and at 6pm Felicia and another woman showed up and we chatted for an hour and a half while we counted the Crossfit workout for BJMUTA's competition team.

Then it was time for the women's gi class. There were a half dozen women there, and we worked armbars, chokes and transitions to butterfly sweeps from guard. At the end we did some rolling - they go pretty intensely, so I really had to focus. The last ten minutes of the class I rolled with Felicia, who managed to armbar me and choke me in about a zillion different ways, including the last gi choke which she seemed to apply from halfway across the room. The funny thing is, like rolling with Elliott, you can feel Felicia coming for your ass, but there's nothing you can do to stop her. :)

At the end I grabbed her gi again to pull her into my guard and she said, "time for Crossfit!" So we joined about 30 people to do a 20-10-5 (or 30-20-10 for the advanced people) circuit of kettlebell pulls, shuttle runs and burpees. "The trash can is over there", Felicia told me after I finished.

I told all of the women that I wanted to get a picture of the group to send to the kimonogirls, so I have attached that picture. You can look at it and know that these women are all saying, "hi, kimonogirls!" Keep in mind that this was after Crossfit, so we're all sweaty for a really good reason. :)

Off to get some coffee and walk to Legends for my 10am lesson with Scott.

Have fun tonight! Miss y'all!

Missed you all today! Natalie, I hear you did a great job with your gauntlet. Congratulations!!

I don't know how many of you are interested in what I am doing out here in California, but I wanted to write all of it down. If you don't want to get my daily jiu-jitsu updates, just drop me a quick email and say "no thanks". You won't hurt my feelings. :)

My stupid body woke me up at 5am. After 4-1/2 hours of sleep. I managed to lie in bed until almost 6:30, at which point I gave up and started puttering.

Around 8:30 I grabbed a Starbucks coffee and drove to Valencia, which is about 30 miles north of Hollywood, to visit Big John McCarthy's Ultimate Training Academy. Silly name, but it's a great facility. Check it out at http://www.bjmuta.com.

When I walked in, Felicia Oh was teaching a Crossfit class. She came over and introduced herself, making sure to scold me for not coming in time to join Crossfit. I hung out and watched for about 20 minutes while I waited for the competition BJJ class to start.

One of the BJMUTA guys fought last weekend and apparently got stuck/tapped/something in scarf hold, so they spent the class going over scarf hold transitions, escapes and submissions. (I wrote them down and will be posting them to http://tapgrrl.livejournal.com). Cool stuff, and I got to work with the only other girl there, a woman called Julie. Julie is a cop, and though she's only been training BJJ for a month, she has a lot of potential. At 140 lbs she was shockingly strong, enough to give any of us a run for our money. We rolled for about 20 minutes after class was over, and she did a great job. Unfortunately, I'm not going to get to see her again, because she is going to be out of town this week and won't be back in the gym until next Saturday. I leave on Friday. :( But hey, I made a new friend! I love jiu-jitsu for that.

Oh, and I got to see Felicia roll with a guy who was significantly larger and stronger than her. They went for 14 minutes with the guy frantically trying to defend Felcia's non-stop attacks. She went from submission to submission: armbars, chokes, arm triangles, omaplatas (she must have rolled him halfway across the mat trying to get one), kimuras, ankle locks, wrist locks, like one flowed right into the other. When she wasn't five seconds away from a submission, she was sweeping him and passing his guard over and over and over again. At one point he managed to escape and stand up, so she literally chased him across the mat and tackled him into her guard. I have never seen anything like it. To his credit, he did manage to keep Felicia Oh from tapping him for 14 minutes, but most of that was because her coach was telling him what she was going to do and how to defend it. :) I feel incredibly privileged to have had the opportunity to watch her do her thing.

After class I sat around and talked to Felicia and Julie for almost an hour and a half. Felicia is SO NICE. She's smart, outgoing, helpful and funny. I was sad to leave. I would have stuck around longer, but I had to get my hair done. :)

While I was there, we chatted a bit about my training for the week, and specifically about 10th Planet. After talking to a few people, I am a little scared of training in Eddie's classes, because I hear that the guys are really aggressive and intense while rolling. Felicia didn't do much to dispel that - she suggested that I talk to Scott Epstein to see who I should roll with, if anybody, or that I just do the drills and watch the rolling before I decide if I want to try it. I think it's good advice. It would be awful to have this amazing opportunity for the week and have to miss most of it because of an injury. So I figured I'd try the Monday night and Tuesday morning classes at 10th Planet (I have a private with Felicia on Monday morning, and another with Scott Epstein just before the Tuesday morning 10th Planet class). If after watching them I didn't feel comfortable, I'd do Felicia's classes, try Shawn Williams' classes, or train at Rickson Gracie's place in LA. Seriously, this area has so many black belts that it might very well collapse in on itself and become a jiu-jitsu singularity. So," as Tank Girl would say, "it ain't all bad".

Tomorrow I will be hanging out with my friends Vicky and Nina. I was going to take the day off of BJJ, but I see that there is a 5:30pm class at Rickson Gracie's school....

- A

PS: I am going to take Leah's advice and see if Felicia will let me video tape the privates. I figure it can't hurt to ask Scott if I could do that, too. Oh, and Felicia wants me to show up early so she can put me through a Crossfit workout on Monday morning. Wish me luck. :)

‘I have never been happier’ says the man who won gold but lost God

Google VP of User Experience Marissa Mayer gives a lecture at Stanford

"Submission wrestling" is no-gi Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Which is awesome.

I got to roll with a woman named Jen (I think I heard someone say she was a blue belt), who pwn3d me six ways to Sunday. She offered me lots of helpful tips and even showed me a cool modified Ezekiel choke. She normally comes to the evening BJJ classes, so I've never seen her before (my evening classes are with kimonogirl), but hopefully I'll get to work with her again.

MAN I love fighting.

Off to submission wrestling!*

* Not as kinky as it sounds

Kyrie, my little baby girl Yorkie, died around 9pm tonight after fighting with lung disease for a couple of weeks. I was with her when she died.

I realize that many people will think "she's just a dog", but if you know me then you know how much my doggies mean to me. Kyrie was with me for 2/3 of my adult life. I got her when she was seven weeks old, in June of 1995. She moved across the US with me, twice, and sat quietly on my shoulder as I drove from the US to Canada. Until my job at Q9, she went to work with me almost every day, snuggling in my lap while I typed on the computer. She was with me on my first visit to Toronto and was my only companion on countless business trips around North America. She's been to grocery stores, restaurants and spas, riding in my purse, and I have met many people who talked to me because of the unbearable cuteness of the tiny, excited teacup Yorkie who was practically dragging me behind her on walks.

Loki, Kyrie's half-brother, is doing fine, and sitting on my pillow as I write this.

If I'm a little messed up over the next couple of weeks, I apologize. I miss her very much.

If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised. - Dorothy Parker

"Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'". - Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman

krustukles says:
it's like knowing what your toddler says
krustukles says:
you, as the mother, know that ba is billy's word for bus
krustukles says:
when for my child, ba is the word for beryllium because my child has learned the periodic table
krustukles says:
and your child is stupid

Olivia Chow just admired my MacBook. We're both at the same solar energy meeting.

You know you want to be like me.

giggles will be down for a few minutes while I swap out a hard drive.

EDIT: Done.

Today I went to see the Toronto FC lose their fourth match in a row, which was oodles and oodles of fun. It wasn't a bad game, even though they lost. They gave us scarves and silly little headbands and I got a scotch egg. I drank a beer and laughed and jumped excitedly when our team almost scored a goal.

I didn't yell at anyone on the field, which made me pretty much the only one in the entire stadium.

Now, I've never been to a Canadian NHL hockey game, but before this afternoon I couldn't imagine Torontonians being rude. These fans were angry when the other team got fouled and completely pretending to look the other way when a Toronto player stuck his hand down the pants of a Kansas City defender and gave him a wedgie. ¹ They booed at the other team as they entered the field. They booed the other team's keeper for the entire match after the keeper drew a foul at the beginning of the first half. When the other team scored partway through the second half, Toronto fans threw beers at them. They would shout things like, "Harrington, you suck! I know you can hear me. You suck!" There was a guy with paint all over his face, wearing a kilt pulled up to his nipples. The booster club chanted "you asshole!" at the other team's strikers.

Now, I could never bring myself to do stuff like that, but holy cow was it fun (and funny) to be a part of it.

^1. I made that part up.

My picture is on page L2 of today's Toronto Star.

I was in a restaurant a couple of weeks ago and heard two old guys grumping, as old grumpy guys do. "Do you believe in global warming?" one of them asked. "No! Ha ha ha", the other responded, leaving me wanting desperately to confront them about it. I left the restaurant instead.

For some reason we seem to care about the opinions of uninformed people, even creating policy for the purpose of allowing them to continue being ignorant. We will, as Richard Dawkins observes, go to great lengths to avoid offending the sentiments religious people who believe in something that is highly unlikely, without a shred of evidence. We turn our heads when we should be confrontational, giving tacit approval under the guise of tolerance to people who believe that women are lesser people or that two dudes shouldn't marry.

I've decided that my new mantra is, "I don't care what you believe. I care what you know." You can believe that butt sex between men is going to cause the collapse of civilization as we know it, or that God created the world in six days, or that the US government is hiding UFO wreckage from a crash at Roswell, NM in 1947, or that the Flying Spaghetti Monster lives in heaven with beer volcanos, but I don't care. Evidence, please. Otherwise, keep your opinions out of my public policy.

Are you on Facebook? Add Jesus!

I've saved a copy of the profile so I'll have it when it's inevitably deleted.

Check out the Fido commercial with gay content! I saw it on the plane last night.

"I'm not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars." - Barack Obama

Apple Unveils New Product-Unveiling Product

"Before today, I couldn't imagine paying $12,000 for a product-unveiling product," CNET editor Jasmine France said after the presentation. "Now I can't imagine living without it."

Shortly after Jobs' address, Microsoft announced that they are working on a similar product, the Launch-O, due to debut in 2009.

I am cynical about marketing hype and I hate consumer capitalism. However, I seem to have developed strong internal defense mechanisms for pretending that Apple isn't part of that machine. I'll buy whatever Steve Jobs announces. Right now I'm waiting for the iTV, which I will buy right away even though my TiVo works just fine for viewing video that I download. I own two iPods (to be fair, I won one of them at our last Christmas party), a Mac Mini and a MacBook. In the months leading up to the release of the iPhone, I'm jumping up and down like a little kid who has discovered she's getting a pony.

If Jobs announced the iRock, a $99.95 pet rock available in six different colours, I'm sure I'd find some reason to buy it, too.

The first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem, right?

This userpic maketh me for to laugh.

I'm back in Toronto! Today i see mscissorhands to let her work her magic with my hair, which has been growing, unchecked, since December. It's really long now. Well, long compared to the way it was when it was, um, you know, shorter.

Also, some people are so stupid.

Giggles seems to be unresponsive. Looking at it now.

Last night, between bouts of coughing and sneezing, I watched Barack Obama's "I'm running for president" announcement. Now here's a guy who is plain-spoken without being a retarded monkey. He's smart. He's an inspiring and charismatic speaker. He has a message we can all get behind. And, uh, he's hot.

After my viewing of his speech (scroll to the bottom), I not only want to vote for the man, I also want to lock his wife in a trunk so I can marry him myself.

I've ^[-2] been thinking a lot about religion over the last few months. Last year I picked up a copy of Intelligent Thought: Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement as an impulse purchase, mostly because I'm a big theoretical physics dork and it has pieces by Lee Smolin, Leonard Susskind and Lisa Randall. But it got me thinking about so-called "intelligent design", which led me to pick up a copy of the textbook (and I use the word "textbook" in its loosest possible sense) Of Pandas and People.

If you've not heard of this book before, it's apparently the textbook preferred by people who want to inflict the absurdity of intelligent design upon impressionable young children under the guise of "teaching the debate". To develop a well-informed opinion, I dutifully read it cover to cover, stopping frequently to rant about the lack of critical thinking, and the mental gymnastics required to avoid the logical inconsistencies, that must have gone into composing such an utter piece of shite.

The content is ridiculous, but what bothers me even more is that 1) it got published by a reputable publisher; and 2) that people actually consider using it in the classroom. Intelligent design is not science. It's religion.

The prevalence of religion is frightening to me. Over 91% of Americans ^[-1] and 80% of Canadians ^[0] call themselves religious. Many studies have been done on the type of person who holds religious belief: of note was the article published in Nature in 1998, reporting the results of a survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences in which only 7% of those surveyed acknowledged a belief in "a personal god". ^[1]

The supposed arguments against atheism (or, in my case, antitheism) are often couched in scientific terms. I think part of the problem is that North Americans--people in the US in particular, but Canadians are not exempt from this--don't understand science. There's a real thread of anti-intellectualism that runs through the US cultural consciousness, and it makes people unwilling to truly exercise their minds.^[2]

Science is not a religion, and to characterize it as such is nonsensical. Science is a methodology. A process. It doesn't pretend to have all of the answers, and I think that's one reason religious people can be hostile to it. They're used to having some book or priest or imam tell them what to believe, no matter how ridiculous the assertion. ^[3]

Science is fuzzy. On a short time scale it breaks often, and there are vicious fights^[4] among scientists who have particular personal investments in their hypotheses. Yet, ultimately, everything works itself out. The good hypotheses stick around and get refined; the bad ones are disposed of. But everything is evidence-based. Everything. And this is where science differs from religion. In science, if you make a claim that can't be falsified, or if your claim is demonstrably false, you are set upon by a pack of wild dogs^[5] with pocket protectors and you are torn to pieces. You can't even get published in a reputable journal unless you can back up what you say.^[6] In religion, you can come up with whatever crazy thing you want to, prepend a "God said that..." to it, and boom, you've got people who won't have butt sex any more.^[7] Not only that, but they'll enthusiastically deny the right to butt sex to others.^[8]

So many of the world's problems would be solved if we just taught people to be critical of any assertions made without concomitant demonstrations of evidence. I'm sure you enjoy your imaginary friend in the sky who listens to your prayers ^[9], and I honestly couldn't care less what you do in your private life, but don't presume to develop legislation that affects me--or any sort of scholastic program for impressionable kids who are just a couple of years removed from eating dirt for fun--based on what you or someone else thinks the imaginary friend is telling you.

---

Footnotes:

^[-2] Ever seen a negative footnote index? It happens when one forgets to footnote some earlier references and is too lazy to go back and change all of the numbers. That's me. Hi!

^[-1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Religious_affiliation

^[0] http://www.religioustolerance.org/can_rel2.htm

^[1] Interestingly, the percentage was highest (14.3%) among mathematicians and lowest (5.5%) among biological scientists.

^[2] Allow me to demonstrate. I mean, almost 51% elected a retarded puppet monkey for president, and this was after four years of him taking great strides toward destroying the economy, rolling back personal freedoms, murdering tens of thousands of Iraqis, consolidating power in the executive branch in a way that certainly made Nixon cum in his pants, and creating a new generation of Islamist whackjobs who are enthusiastic about blowing up Americans for extra credit.

^[3] God cares that you eat pork? His "son" was born from a woman who never had sex? Come on.

^[4] You, sir, are a fraud and a charlatan, with the boorish manners of a Yalie. Also, yo mama.

^[5] Lycaon pictus, in case you were wondering.

^[6] Or unless you know the editor. Luckily, for all of the Alex Chius out there, the Internet has no such content filter.

^[7] Actually, they will still have butt sex, they'll just do it with congressional pages or gay sex workers and then act all indignant when they get busted.

^[8] Unless you're a congressional page or a gay sex worker.

^[9] "Dear little baby Jesus, who's sittin' in his crib watchin the Baby Einstein videos, learnin' 'bout shapes and colors. I would like to thank you for bringin' me and my moma together, and also that my kids no longer sound like retarded gang-bangers."

"Toronto Newsgirls open new gym" on Google Video
Global did a story on the Newsgirls! Women's boxing, hell yeah. tankyouverymuch is featured prominently in this. You can see me (well, the side of my head) talking to her about 1:45 into the video.

Via comments in kitiara's journal:

Flirting with a Westboro Baptist Church man

From the Department of Obvious Research, via sciencedaily:

Informing Partners Can Help Cut Sexually Transmitted Infections

There have been several requests for pictures of the new place. Well, here you go.

http://www.nerdgrrl.org/gallery2/v/renovations/melvilleave/

Some samples:

giggles users: I should be done with all of the upgrades. Well, not really. I have one more version level to go, but it's been such a pain upgrading the last two versions that I want to take a break and nurse my wounds.

Let me know if, you know, like, stuff is still broken. And stuff. And I will make for the fixing.

On a personal note, I thought you would like to know that my hair is getting long.

'appy New Yearz omfglol,,.

giggles users: i'm doing some upgrades now. It's going to be down for a few hours.

"It's a little early", the waiter just explained apologetically... at 1:30 pm.

I'm alive, I just don't have anything to say.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

Same-sex marriage doesn't look so good, but at least the Republicans don't have a rubber stamp for the next two years.

Also, Mutant Reviewers From Hell give us: Serenity vs. Millennium Falcon. Crew members of Serenity are pitted against the Millennium Falcon's crew and passengers to Alderaan in battles like "The Whiny New Kid: Simon Tam vs. Luke Skywalker". Also, it asks, "is there anyone out there who thinks Chewbacca isn't going to make Jayne cry like a little girl?"

giggles users: i'm going to take the server down for about 20 minutes. I have to move it to a new cabinet.

UPDATE: all done.

"Jilli Plays Poker" on Google Video
So freaking cute.

When nerds have time to kill, you get things like Big Mouth Billy Bass Hacking

I love my friends.

About a year and a half ago I joined the Toronto Newsgirls, which has led to many new and wonderful friendships. Among my favourite people on the planet is tankyouverymuch. This is why. This picture is so Tank that the question is, how much more Tank could the picture be? And the answer is none more Tank.

"You know, drunkenness brings out music."

Got this from slaglepuss. Comments are screened so you don't have to worry about people seeing your answers. I enjoyed answering it for her, so hey, have at it if you wanna.

1. Your Middle Name:
2. Age:
3. Single or Taken:
4. Favorite Movie:
5. Favorite Song:
6. Favorite Band/Artist:
7. Dirty or Clean:
8. Tattoos and/or Piercings:

HERE COMES THE FUN ... ... ...

1. Do we know each other outside of Live Journal?
2. Whats your philosophy on life?
3. Would you have my back in a fight?
4. Would you keep a secret from me if you thought it was in my best interest?
5. What is your favorite memory of us?
6. Would you give me a kidney?
7. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:
8. Would you take care of me when I'm sick?
9. Can we get together and make a cake?
10. Have you heard any rumors of me lately?
11. Do you/have you talk(ed) crap about me?
12. Do you think I'm a good person?
13. Would you drive across country with me?
14. Do you think I'm attractive?
15. If you could change anything about me, would you?
16. What do you wear to sleep?
17. Would you come over for no reason just to hang out?
18. Would you go on a date with me if i asked you?
19. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?
20. Will you post this so I can fill it out for you?

I'm sure many of you have seen the Trunk Monkey ads, but for those who haven't:

http://allowe.com/Humor/video/TrunkMonkey1.wmv

http://allowe.com/Humor/video/TrunkMonkey2.wmv

http://allowe.com/Humor/video/TrunkMonkey3.wmv

http://allowe.com/Humor/video/TrunkMonkey4.wmv

Last Monday morning I went back to the gym for the first time in seven weeks. I started out with some fast incline walking on the treadmill, then went to boxing practice (without doing any actual boxing) that evening. Yesterday morning, krustukles and I did some grappling, and last night I sparred with other boxers. This morning I did squats, DB rows and overhead barbell presses.

I'm back.