Back to Boobs...

I was incredulous when I found this personal journal by
"Marianne" of California, who describes in vivid detail how she
got her "B.A." --breast augmentation surgery -- through-the-navel blow-up
boobs, in fact, acronym'd TUBA-- and there's lots more at this site.

I remember looking at photos on the Internet and in magazines constantly to determine my desired size, look, etc. I knew I wanted to be a full DD and I really wanted to have breasts like Pamela Anderson. So I of course took pics of her perfect boobs. I wanted fake, round, stuck on, in your face BOOBS! I wanted them to stick straight up when I laid down...




Get your "Yes, They're Fake" merchandise right here, folks.

From BoingBoing Blog's Mark Frauenfelder, comes this
intriguing stuff about Dr. Atkin's death report -- whose low carb diet is really
high protein-high fat --How can that be good for you, really?

Still, there is some mystery to it all --

Today, I sent an email to the Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), the non-profit organization that gave Dr. Atkins' death report to the Wall Street Journal. The PCRM promotes a vegan diet, so they obviously don't like the Atkins' diet, which is almost impossible to follow as a vegan.

A group called the Center for Consumer Freedom, a non-profit supported by restaurants and food companies that sell meat and junk food (and are therefore natural enemies of the PCRM), loves to issue press releases calling the PCRM a "phony" organization. It's doubtful that either group delivers the unvarnished truth, but on Tuesday the CCF issued a press release claiming that:

The late Dr. Robert Atkins is being smeared for his alleged obesity at the time of his death, by a phony doctors organization that has been exposed as a front group for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and has been censured by the American Medical Association (AMA).
The AMA has formally censured PCRM in the past, calling its recommendations "irresponsible" and "potentially dangerous to the health and welfare of Americans." The AMA has also called PCRM a "fringe organization" that uses "unethical tactics" and is "interested in perverting medical science."

Dr. Stuart Trager MD, chairman of the Atkins Physicians Council ... release this morning reads in part: "Due to water retention ... [Atkins] had a weight that varied between 180 and 195. During his coma, as he deteriorated and his major organs failed, fluid retention and bloating dramatically distorted his body and left him at 258 pounds at the time of his death, a documented weight gain of over 60 pounds."

9/11 Miscellany from What Matters:
1. The World is ensnared by the word 'terrorism'
2 a. b. c. Larry Silverstein - a crook?
3. Former German Defense Minister speaks out
4. Last Post from Dick Eastman, who gave his all

This is some new material - interesting perspective from across the pond--
WHAT MATTERS-165_ 9-11 Miscellany.eml

All bets are off in Sandoval County (where I live) with regard to gay
marriages too...The County Clerk, Victoria Dunlap, announced on
Thursday that Sandoval County would grant marriage licenses to
same-sex couples...and the next day, over 60 licenses were granted,
mostly to female couples - marriages were arranged immediately,many happy people celebrated!
- then the Governor and the Attorney General nixed the whole deal! Said it was all illegal, after all!

These people are insane, why do they
even care? It's baffling to me.

I am incredulous that Bush is calling for a
constitutional amendment to ban same-sex unions --
that will NOT help his campaign, I wouldn't think.
He should just keep his mouth shut about it!
This country is getting so polarized, every issue adds to the divide.

On a lighter note -- My dearest friend from waaaaaay back, Steve Cadwell
married Joe Levine--his partner for 15 years, co-parents of an 11 yr. old adopted
Guatemalan child, Isaac --in the town Stevie grew up in,
Rutland, Vermont on October 4-- in one of the first civil unions sanctioned by state law.

Steve sent me a gleeful poem he wrote, as a toast --

On the Occasion of the Freedom to Marry Coalitions’ Sold out Dinner;
The Park Plaza, Boston, Massachusetts 2/14/04 Saint Valentine's Day

a brief intro of the courses, such as....


Mother’s Goosed Rhyme over Cocktails

Merry Mary to Marry Sherry!
Why’s that so contrary?
Why does the right’s anger grow?

Are they empty Cuckolded Shells?
Deaf to Civil Wedding Bells?
And oh! The Religious Wrong makes such a Row!

Appetizer:

Warmed basket of tender mixed gender rolls .
Black woman’s wet eyes glory gleam
To join white gay man’s deepest dream.
We do overcome. We are overcome.

Salacious Salad Course (( off the record ))

First Course; Pasta Futura

Step past Time. Step past Time.
Marry! Popping out all over.

West Side Story’s happy ending:
Jets snap up Sharks in a mass wedding.

First comes love,
Then comes marriage
Justice doesn’t come to more miscarriage.
Halls don’t come tumbling down: Walls do.

Main DisssCourse

Which wicked which is dead?
Bate and hate and switch,
that angry itch, is dead.
Oh, land of yellow brick road-kill,
Redeem your freedom still.
Oz’s new causes:
Harriet to marry Juliet.

....to

Clearing the palate and the table:
Groundhog wakes early to shadow moon.
Plate Planets line up and laugh to see such sport.
Fork runs away with Fork. Spoon spoons Spoon.

....LOL!
Mazel Tov to Steve and Joe - and to all the ladies
we love so well, Aqui en Sandoval!

Nuances of gay identities reflected in new language
This is all very interesting -
'Homosexual' is passé in a 'boi's' life: "First, there was the term 'homosexual,' then 'gay' and 'lesbian,' then the once taboo 'dyke' and 'queer.'
Now, all bets are off." — San Francisco Chronicle


This new vernacular for genderfying is fascinating stuff:

What it all means Definitions of many words in the gay lexicon are hotly contested. Here is a sample:

Genderqueer: Someone who views the gender options as more than just male and female or who doesn't fit into the binary male-female system.

Transgender: An umbrella term for transgression of the binary gender system. May include surgical, hormonal or nonhormonal changes that result in a gender identity different from the one assigned at birth.

Pansexual: Someone attracted to people of multiple genders.

Trannydyke: A transgender person attracted to people with a more feminine gender.

Trannyfag: A transgender person attracted to people with a more masculine gender.

Boi: A boyish gay guy or a biological female with a boyish presentation.

Heteroflexible: A straight person with a queer mind-set.

E-mail Rona Marech at rmarech@sfchronicle.com.

Top of the Hill - a day in February

Mad Cow!
Lolly was a vegetarian...I am an omnivore, and I try not to give all that much thought to the bigger questions of what I am eating.
Now I am reading more about this Mad cow disease - BSE -bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and the fact that it is many diseases at once....CJD-
Cruetzfeld Jacob disease -- and CWD - chronic wasting disease -- and scabie, the same thing in ovine as bovine...hmmmm....20:20 hindsight!
I am thinking more about this .... More about prions - more about cannalistic feeding -- more about
the FDA covering up this whole story....Whew!

Now please, you must immediately go to look at this Flash movie: The Meatrix

From Boingboing.net: This website is by a man who claims to have slaughtered the mad cow. He says the cow was not a downer as claimed by the USDA.

WE WERE ONLY TESTING DOWNERS FOR BSE. NO MORE DOWNERS MEANS NO MORE BSE TESTING. PERIOD. We tested that big white walker because she was mixed in with the downers. Mad cows are not downers they are up and they are crazy. The USDA started testing downers because they didn't think they would find any BSE cows in that mess. They could then say to the consumer we've been testing and we haven't found anything. EAT YOUR MEAT. BUY BEEF. IT'S SAFELink

They are not testing the cows, because it would blow the lid off this story--

From Newswise_
Krull, a strong advocate for mad cow disease testing of all slaughtered cows intended for market, suggests the U.S. follow the lead of countries such as England and Japan. England, in response to their mad cow disease epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, instates mandatory testing of all slaughtered cows intended for market, keep detailed records of all cows within their borders, and banned the use of all ruminant feed. Currently the U.S. and Canada lag on all accounts, says Krull.

“It’s disturbing that, even with a confirmed case of mad cow disease, slaughtered cows are not tested before they are sent to market,” said Krull. The United States Department of Agriculture tests approximately .03 percent of U.S. slaughtered cattle for mad cow disease in their random spot tests.

Testing of all cattle as part of the USDA’s regular procedure, according to Krull, the cost of adding such testing is minimal, between $20 to $25 per cow, which translates into about six cents per pound of beef. Krull says the issue of testing for mad cow disease is highly political. The more cattle tested, the more likely it is that some will be found with mad cow disease. “They don’t want to find it,” says Krull. “The USDA really should be funding this like crazy, but they're not.”

This is Your Brain on Beef
--
Madcow.org brings us the Thomas Pringle interview which will make you think twice or three times! about eating beef--by which I refer to factory-farm supermarket beef, part of an industry that hasused cannabilistic practices to feed calves blood and by-products, which is so disgusting.

And of course no one wants to know about this. Least of all me.

From Dr. Pringle's interview:

Brandan Kearney: I mentioned something about mad cow disease to a friend, and she said "Isn't that just some sort of conspiracy theory?" I also know people who refuse to visit your site because they don't want to be upset. One might argue that the United States doesn't need to censor information, because we're prone not to believe things when we hear them, or we choose to tune them out entirely.

Dr. Thomas Pringle: Good observation. This is the golden age of denial and avoidance... something like twenty percent of adults are on Prozac, and a lot of the others wallow in TV.

Brandan Kearney: Still, you mentioned that the site got seventeen-thousand hits one week; obviously people are using it to educate themselves. Could you discuss the beneficial effects of your site - the most gratifying, concrete results you've seen?

Dr. Thomas Pringle: The way it works is indirect and ungratifying. While there have been two-hundred-thousand visits from .gov from fifty-seven countries (they need to stay informed), only a handful provide direct links to us from their own TSE pages. It is a control-of-information issue for them; governments are used to controlling and spinning information. The press goes along with this to an alarming degree. Thus the Web threw their system into chaos. People who actually knew something now owned a printing press and had free perpetual distribution.

This disease is an inherently difficult topic. All power ultimately arises from content. Governments can be driven into information oblivion. Content rules.

However, governments are very reluctant to acknowledge an information alternative to themselves, because this cedes power. And so while I was quoted in two London papers and the New York Times yesterday on different subjects, only the Times identified me. And when a long-advocated, no-brainer policy comes about, such as today's end of cannibalistic feeding in the UK, it is their own thinking.

It is all compounded in this particular disease, indeed driven, by huge economic stakes in two megabuck industries: medical (blood, surgery) and livestock. Most government agencies -- e.g., the FDA or CDC -- were captured long ago by the industries they were supposed to regulate, and were reduced to towel boys.

Scientists are very similar to government; they are not accustomed to the rapid-publication aspect of the Web. Again, it is all about control. They are up the creek.

Meet the Prez

From On Lisa Rein's Radar - here is a hilarious
short clip on video from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
reporting on the Tim Russert interview on Meet the Press
with none other than our Commander in Chief - George W!

It is so funny, don't miss it. Download it now!

All about breasts

The odd thing was we had spent the day talking about breasts!

Ironically, a very dear friend was staying with us to go for surgery
Monday morning, after Super Bowl Sunday, to get her 30-yr problematic
breast implants removed from her body. She was to do so because
she had ruptured an implant somehow, and it was abcessed and
leaking.

Her long career as a slim, shapely woman was over - she
would return to "ironing-board flat" as a crone, grateful to get
those things out before they blew up and killed her.

We talked about breasts - how they were a symbol of fitting in to
society's mold of perfection. She was childless - hers were merely
ornamental. I had nursed three children over ten years, long and hard.
I am grateful for my skin, my glandulars never mammogrammed, they're
real and they're... well,you know!?

(...Ariana had told me that the muscles which hold the breasts high are
"Cooper's" and that the years lead to a condition known as "Cooper's
Droop"!)

Visiting the surgeon who would remove the implants, she heard him
talking to a young woman through the wall, waiting in an examination
room--

Girl: "Oh I would like to be a C, well surely not a D, that wouldn't be
right...I don't want to be a tease, you know, but just a B, or maybe a C...not a D..."

Doctor: "You have the choice, you can be any size you would like. Many
women choose to be a D."

Girl: "Really, well, I guess I could be a C, or even a D. Are they safe?"

Doctor: "Of course they are perfectly safe. Less than 1% have problems
with the modern breast augmentation implants."

She hears this through the thin walls. The surgery is successful.
She is now an A-minus.

On the subject of breast cancer - I ask you to read this article by
Harriet Beinfield, posted at Health World Online -


Revisiting Accepted Wisdom in the Management of Breast Cancer --
here is a brief abstract--

Misconceptions and illusions prevail in the management of breast cancer. Historical review reminds us that medical practice is commonly rooted in tradition rather than proof: The Halsted mastectomy inadvertently served the burgeoning profession of surgery in the early 20th century more than it has benefited women with breast cancer, yet 100 years later the operation continues to thrive. Despite evidence that mastectomy, radiation following lumpectomy, axillary node dissection, or intensive follow-up surveillance have little impact on survival, these practices are adhered to tenaciously. The extent to which current treatment for breast cancer succeeds in prolonging life remains open to question. Many accepted ideas and interventions are perilously disconnected from their true merit. The imperative for doctors to do something sometimes contradicts their pledge to do no harm. Reflection on what is known should guide future action. (Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. 1997; 3(5):35-53)


...from the article:

Poet Lucille Cliftons writes:
we are running
running and
time is clocking us
from the edge like an only
daughter.
our mothers stream before us,
cradling their breasts in their
hands.
oh pray that what we want
is worth this running,
pray that what we're running
toward
is what we want


(this article thanks to Lolly Simkins Daniels)

Navigation Notes -

If you are looking for Harold Joe Waldrum's obituary,
it is posted at this page -- on January 7, 2004.

For a fabulous photoblog, check out Capturing Light -
this photo of the Savannah Bridge is especially amazing.

Skid - Proof Grass in front of The Pentagon --

Introducing - The Amazing Penta-Lawn 2000!

This is the story by D. Grant Haynes on Online Journal that says it all - everything -

A mammary gland is a mammary gland, but 10,000 dead Iraqi civilians is a war crime

By D. Grant Haynes
Online Journal Contributing Writer

February 5, 2004—The inanity, the puritanical hypocrisy, the blindness to significant realities, the mass stupidity that characterize—indeed, that are—America are all encapsulated in the brouhaha now raging over the partial exposure of one of performer Janet Jackson's breasts during Super Bowl 2004's halftime extravaganza February 1.

After refusing to lend Super Bowl airing to a MoveOn.org-produced 30-second spot critical of George W. Bush's performance as president, CBS News crawled, groveled and apologized for more than 24 hours because viewers of the Super Bowl halftime show may have caught a glimpse of one of Jackson's breasts when co-singer Justin Timberlake intentionally pulled her scant outfit down a bit in a planned finale as he sang, "I'm gonna have you naked by the end of this song."

"CBS deeply regrets the incident that occurred during the Super Bowl halftime show. We attended all rehearsals throughout the week and there was no indication that any such thing would happen. The moment did not conform to CBS broadcast standards, and we would like to apologize to anyone who was offended," CBS offered by way of a quick apology.

And there is more insanity.

Secretary of Defense Colin Powell's rotund son, Michael Powell, head of the Federal Communications Commission, promised a federal investigation of the nipple incident, according to AP.

"Federal Communications Commission chief Michael Powell said in a statement, 'Like millions of Americans, my family and I gathered around the television for a celebration. Instead, that celebration was tainted by a classless, crass and deplorable stunt.' He promised an investigation . . ."

A federal investigation, folks.

And even the National Football League—prime purveyors of violence and animality at all times—had to apologize to America's Christian families, saying the NFL was "extremely disappointed" in Jackson's performance.

All of this feigned outrage from these unlikely hypocrites over a harmless attention-seeking stunt of a few second's duration executed by a mass media icon notorious for such actions.

By way of inexplicable contrast, I read of no outrage being expressed by any of these individuals or groups about CBS's cowardice in pulling the MoveOn.org ad.

Nor did I read of an apology from CBS that they lacked the courage and fairness to run the ad criticizing Bush for his role in destroying the economic viability of one nation and the very infrastructure of two other nations in his three years of miscreant misrule in an office he never won.

Nor did I read or hear of any outrage from these self-righteous Americans so shocked and indignant at the sight of a woman's breast that their tax dollars have been used to murder up to 10,000 Iraqi civilians in an immoral war of conquest—a war whose WMD justification has been universally exposed as a bald-faced lie that was peddled repeatedly by Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Indeed, there has been no moral outrage from staid and uptight sorts of John Ashcroft's stripe who blanch white and faint away at the sight of a human female's breast, (even a sexagenarian bronze one), but who were happy to see their nation launch an unprovoked shock and awe blitzkrieg on Baghdad last March that killed thousands in a few hours.

Where is the moral outrage at this nation's morally reprehensible record among these so-called morally upright individuals?

Sadly and deplorably, there is none.

Baring a woman's breast or viewing a woman's breast is not a sin and is hardly a newsworthy event. Ms. Jackson's publicity stunt deserved minimal attention at best, but has received non-stop major coverage.

On the other hand, murdering up to 10,000 innocent Iraqi civilians in a brutal military campaign of imperialistic aggression that continues to lack any justification whatsoever was and is a crime against humanity that should receive wide and continuing exposure, until the perpetrators are brought before an international war crimes tribunal at The Hague.

But there is only silence among the media in these matters, as they remain transfixed by what they see as a truly important news story: Janet Jackson's nipple.

The skewed value system of this sick nation of puritanical hypocrites causes me nausea on a daily basis.

Wardrobe Malfunction

I suppose I'll weigh in on the breastular controversy
that's raging -- Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction.
Her performance was about the only few minutes I actually
watched of the Super Bowl, since the Bushin30seconds
ad from MoveOn.Org was censored by CBS, and anyway
I was making dinner, as per usual for Stupor Bowl Sunday...
a "retail holiday" invented to boost sales between Xmas
and Valentine's Day...

...And true to form, it was a marketing blitzkreig, aimed at the
male adolescent and post-adolescent men in need of medical miracles.

Let's not forget, the pubescent-adolescent female American Barbie-Beyon'Ces
got an education in what it means to be a woman in this culture: what this is all
about -- primarily, breasts.

Breasts. Butts. Bruisin boobs. Bumpin...bitchin...a'busin,
stripping rubber bustiers...submissive jiving gyrating grabbing...
the tearing away, revealing the hard metal biting-back of ...
the Breast... the Beast!

This is the breast of a warrior who has lost the war.
Lost it!

This is not the nurturing breast of mother, the sweet giver of life.
This is not the beautiful breast of the mother who loves you,
or the tender breast of a lover, who shares her exquisite secrets with you.

This is the pointy weapon of repressed female sexuality and its
destructive power, long kept in check by physical domination,
abuse, fear and pain, which emerges as an icon of that pain, that
humiliation, thrown to the public in a performance that combines
black leather Nazi-style sexual displays with the preachy
power of commercialized Patriotism!

The Flag, held high, amidst all this black, ritualized dance of pain
and forbidden nightmares.
Onward to the Moon, to Mars, with the Flag and the righteousness
of our penetration and crusade.

We can shoot you from the moon!

What is pornography, if not this horrific flauntation of Sado-masochistic
patriotism? What, a surgically-enhanced, hub-capped protuberance of
semi-feminine forbidden flesh, aimed at the bored and frustrated audience of
130 million football fans, in a stunning instant of wardrobe malfunction?
Surely a flash of flesh is not pornographic - but patriotic sadism is tragically
acceptable when delivered by mass media to millions.

What is defined as obscene - a bronze be-jewelled mammary -- or the fact that
500+ of our country's brave men and women - our children!- have been lost
in a sorrowful battle that need not have been waged....Lost! They are gone
forever, without a mention on the fields of "glory "--The Super Bowl--Not even
a word about them , let alone the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqui women
and men and children, lost to "shock n awe" and that's just another pyrotechnics
show --to them, who would faint dead away at the sight of a woman's unclothed,
innocent, beautiful, bare breast. It is obscene, the culture that fears a woman's
power, and doesn't even bother to honor its own war dead or the millions
injured for the sake of these hyprocites.

I reallly didn't even watch much of the "show " -- the biggest holiday of the year--
I am merely passing on impressions based on
fleeting glimpses. The commercialization of the media and our public life
we have endured so long has become overpowering,so much that it
isn't funny anymore. The whole world is sold, bought and sold, logo'ed
and delivered to the consumer, whose fickle fancy will not float the boat
forever. Whose children, and whose grandchildren, trying to understand this
great mystery --sex and power, ownership and slavery, pain and pleasure --
will pay with their own lives when the note comes due.

New Wal-Mart Site

Is this the Red Planet? It could be Corrales--LOL!