So, Where *Is* That Male Pill?

Administration of testosterone to men markedly reduces sperm counts and is a very efficient and well tolerated method of contraception. Combinations with progestogens or with gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonists are even more effective and suggest that hormonal contraception in men is feasible and may be as effective as the currently used methods.

It Only Took 30 Years to Figure This Out...

The largest study ever to ask whether a low-fat diet reduces the risk of getting cancer or heart disease has found that the diet has no effect.

The $415 million federal study involved nearly 49,000 women ages 50 to 79 who were followed for eight years. In the end, those assigned to a low-fat diet had the same rates of breast cancer, colon cancer, heart attacks and strokes as those who ate whatever they pleased, researchers are reporting today.


AHHAh AHah hHAah aha aha haa

And, once again, it's a study composed entirely of women. Because it's really the fat women in this country that we're all so terribly scared of.

Last Day in Indy

For awhile, anyway. These are always long days. I'm behind on some other projects. I'll get caught up this weekend.

70,000 Dead Women

The International Planned Parenthood Federation estimates 19 million women worldwide will have an unsafe abortion in 2006; a similar number took this risky step last year - 70,000 died.

Off to Indy

I'll be in Indy from Tuesday-Thursday this week.

Oh, I can barely contain my enthusiasm.

Why is it I work at this job again?

Oh, yea, cause it pays me to screw off half the year. The rest of the year it's... Indianapolis.

Fantasy Novel Title Generator

It's not much better than the stuff I come up with myself...

Children's Mists
Heart of Darkness
Island Ruby of Trisilion
Secretِ Fireِ and Dream
Spell of Empire
Spirit of Pride
Stoneِ Rogueِ and Earth
The Isindaria Spirit
The Realm of Eltios
The Rune Herald

Link

The Times On Friedan

Nice overview of Betty Friedan and her work.

Re-Equipped

Last night, I maxed out my credit card and bought one of these:



Dropped the other two computers off with The Geek Squad to see if they can do any data recovery.

Gateway told me that Blue Screen of Death + Clicking Sound + inability to restart past the "Gateway" symbol page meant my hard drive was truly fucked. The other computer has a dead screen and is perpetually restarting, and after dropping $317 useless dollars on "fixing" the Gateway only to have it explode two hours later, I wasn't dropping another $500 on the other computer only to see it, too, die in some horrible way as soon as it got back home.

For the same amount of money ($700 +), I could buy a whole new system (This was $999. I paid the extra $200 cause this had a more comfortable keyboard than the one for $749. Since I spend anywhere from 4-12 hours a day typing on my laptop, comfortable keyboard was priority 1, followed immediately by how good the screen was).

So now I've got a new baby and a 3-year warranty. And I'm getting myself a back-up data storage service or an external hard drive, because this ordeal has been massively ridiculous.

Sometimes I have to learn my lessons the hard way.

Back to work.

Dear Mr. Grande Latte Enema;

Fuck you.

For Those Who Haven't Seen or Heard it Yet:

Pink's "Stupid Girl."

Is Romance Really for Guys?

What exactly is the princess of archetypal hero myths? She’s not a real love interest, since the reasons the hero loves her are never explored. She’s a symbol, possibly like today’s real-life trophy wife. An object of status to impress other men. Maybe that explains why the whole idea of women characters as “love interests” is such a turn-off to women. After all, it’s not much more satisfying to be wanted as a trophy than to not be wanted at all. This could also explain why more than one man has expressed sympathy for Sam (Of Stargate SG-1) that she can’t have her man: they’re extrapolating the hero’s quest onto her, and like a man, part of her prize package for heroic deeds should include the prince of her choice.

(thanks, Jenn)

You Need to Make A Decision

I had lunch with this one editor, she took me to this fancy restaurant, and she told me I had to make a decision...whether or not I was writing for black people or white people." - Danyel Smith

If you're a white writer, would you expect to get asked a question like that?

February's Black History Month

But, then:

For this bitch, every month is Black History Month but my ass can see the value in setting aside one month for deeper exploration.

Luckily We Live in a Tolerant, Peaceful Society Where No One is Killed - er - Discriminated Against. What the Fuck is Up With Shit Like This?

NEW BEDFORD, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Police on Thursday are seeking a man in connection with a gun and hatchet attack at a gay bar in New Bedford, south of Boston. Three people were wounded in what authorities said they suspect were hate crimes.

They "suspect."

Yea.

(via Angry Black Bitch)

Why I Love B

Because he sends me shit like this.

That is just frickin hilarious.

Oh, Nevermind

Two hours in, while working on a short story I was going to submit to an anthology, I got the Blue Screen of Death.

It told me to restart.

So I did. And got the Gateway logo and then... dark screen.

Nothing. And an odd clicking noise.

I restarted it again.

And again.

And again.

And it's dead again.

Once again, I have no computer. It's exploded.

I am so tired.

My Computer is Back! My Computer is Back!

Oh my sweet computer, how do I love you, let me count the ways!

Nice turnaround time from Gateway, of all places...

Get-Well Gifts

What my mom sent me to cheer me up:







and:













My mom is awesome.

Colonizing Other Worlds

Had a story of mine make it past the first cut over at Intergalactic Medicine Show.

Card makes the final cut.

That would be so ironic on so many levels. But then, I thought this was ironic, too, when I sold it.

See, I do have some stories where there's very little violence and no swearing! Really, I do! I just don't write them very often. They aren't quite as fun.

Some Thoughts On Weight

No, no, the other kind.

NancyP asked a number of posts back about how to increase the weight in her free-weight routine without getting an injury or creaking joints and muscles. For the real deal from somebody more experienced than me, I refer everyone to Mistress Krista.

But here's what my experience has been:

When I came to Chicago, I'd been using 5-lb free weights for years and years. I think I first picked them up when I dropped all of my pill/depression weight when I was 18/19. What I realized, at 23, was that I was doing insane amounts of reps with these little weights and seeing absolutely no results. I felt better because I had a routine, but it wasn't doing me any good I could see as far as building muscle.

I did something I don't recommend - I went out and bought 20 lb weights. Anybody in their right mind would have gotten 10 or 15 lbers, but not me. I started doing one set of 3-5 reps with each exercise. It was cool because I cut down the time it took to do my routine, and when I combined this with my twice a week martial arts classes, I noticed a big difference in strength in two weeks. Every week or two I would add one more rep, until I was doing 1 set of 15 of each exercise.

Because I increased by so much weight, I did have some overtraining pain (felt a bit like carpal tunnel in my forearms, actually), and had to slow down in the increase in reps. It took a couple months before I was pain-free again. Which is why I don't recommend going up more than 10 lbs at a time unless it's just a free weight you use occasionally for a few exercises.

When it was relatively easy for me to do two sets of 15 with the 20 lbs weights, I switched to 30 lb weights and dropped my reps to 1 set of 5 again, increasing by 1 rep a week until I got to two sets of 15 for all of my exercises but my bicep curls, which I'll be switching over to 30 lb weights this week.

Going from the 1 set of 5 with 20 lbs to what I'm at now has taken me about... a year and a half, I think. Which seems like a hell of a long time, but there have been a lot of down periods in there: sickness, stress, etc. where I did some backsliding and had to retrain. My ideal is to get up to using 50 lb weights at some point, which I think is doable so long as I ease up into the next weight range slowly and continue to eat enough protein.

Ah, and there's that protein thing.

Eat a lot of protein. Make it a point to eat eggs and lean meat and fish. Jenn was working out with 10 lb weights for months and was trying to figure out why she wasn't able to get up to 15 lbers. When she mentioned this to a friend who lifted weights regularly, he asked how much protein she ate. As I recall, she just sort of stared at him blankly. When she upped her protein, she was able to move to 15 lbs no problem.

As for the weight machines, I try to set everything as close to 100 lbs (or my body weight, for the leg press) for my lower body, and 70-90 lbs for my upper body. I do about two or three sets of fifteen. I do the gym twice a week. My free weights I do every morning.

I have a feeling a lot of this "inexplicable" weight loss I'm experiencing actually has a lot to do with my weight-lifting routine. I eat more now and do less cardio than I did the last time I was at this weight (and I was a few years younger), and I feel like it's pretty effortless now that I have the routine down.

I also eat really frequently - at least five times a day. Lots of yogurt and soup and protein bars, oatmeal, eggs, bacon, fish, pork chops, salad, sometimes some potatoes, etc. During the weekends I'm less structured, and only eat three times a day probably, but since I don't work out on the weekends (not even free weights), it doesn't bug me.

A lot of my success at sticking with this was by deciding I was going to do this to be stronger and kick ass - not to be skinny and weak. As a result, I've lost weight, but I'm not weak.

The other part is that every time I fucked up and didn't go to the gym (cause I was sick, stressed, lazy), or didn't eat the "right" things, or missed my morning weights routine, I didn't guilt myself about it. If I guilted about it, I'd binge eat and avoid the gym like the plague (which is what happened with my MA classes).

There's been a lot of forgiveness instead of self-hate.

That makes a huge difference.

Post script:

Switched out my bicep curls weight from 20 to 30 lbs this morning. I went from 2 sets of 15 to 2 sets of.... 2.

So it goes. You just build it up one week at a time.