Unsolicited Advice

So, I have a Kindle. (I actually have several Kindles, but sidetracking myself on the second sentence would be a new record, so we're going to leave that for now.) I get a lot of ebooks from the public library, both because I got tired of hauling 20 lbs of dead tree back and forth and because sometimes I need to feed my brain something new at 3am when nothing's open. Amazon keeps a closer eye on me than the NSA and Santa Claus combined, so naturally whenever I open the Kindle Library, they do their best to sell me something I want. A few weeks ago, the New Releases lineup showed me a book called Red Side Story , by Jasper Fforde. Though Jasper Fforde is probably better known for the Thursday Next books, Red Side Story is the second book in his Chromatacia series, the first of which, Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron , I read and loved quite a long time ago. It's been fifteen years since that one came out, and I had frankly given up in despair. Red Side Story is als...

It has come to my attention that May is supposed to be Ehlers-Danlos Awareness Month. I've neglected to post anything, on account of I've been busy coping with the consequences of Ehlers-Danlos. May is a busy month for me. I perform, I do technical work for live theater, and I admin at a couple of places that deal with both of those things. This May, I ended up working for 21 consecutive days without a break. I didn't exactly mean to, but a combination of a coworker having to go out of town for a family emergency and several people who scheduled their spring recitals in September and then failed to do any planning until April slowly whittled away my days off until I had Things To Do every goddamn day for three solid weeks. Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome is officially a genetic disorder of collagen formation. The direct effect is that all of the connective tissue in my body is basically made of Silly Putty. Collagen keeps all of your various bones and muscles strung together, so it ...

Hello from the floor, where I once again find myself. Lying face-down on the floor as an adult is an experience. I can trace all of the steps I went through to get here, and all of them made perfect sense at the time. But then I end curled up like a pillbug on my bedroom carpet next to the rat cage, flat on my shins and the top of my head, and I have the nagging feeling I'm somehow doing something wrong. The rats are vaguely curious, but that's mostly because they're convinced I only get out of bed to feed and/or love them. They're not really wrong, but they don't understand the idea of an economy, and gloss over a lot of the intermediate steps. I assumed I was the only one who's been slowly melting into a puddle over the past month or so, but I know a few other people with the one-two Ehlers-Danlos/hay fever punch who have been similarly reduced to primordial sludge, so iunno. Objectively, my seasonal allergies are more annoying than disabling, but anything tha...

I recently cadged a Google Daydream VR rig off of someone on Freecycle. The Daydream is a mass-manufactured headset that Google produced for people who thought that building their own out of cardboard was too ratchet for words. It doesn't really fit me in the same way that swim goggles never really fit me, but I stuck some safety pins in the head strap and you're not meant to move around too much while using it anyway, so it more or less works. The Daydream can be best described as the world's okayest implementation of VR. It's main selling point is its rock-bottom cost, which was achieved by using your extant smartphone for both the display and the head tracking, the two most expensive modules in fancier rigs by Oculus or Vive. It's not a bad idea. We all carry around tiny high-resolution pocket supercomputers that can track our position well enough to catch imaginary Pokémon in the middle of a Wal-Mart parking lot, why not use it for this? The picture is not as po...

It is the weekend before Halloween, and a lot of people who don't normally wear makeup will be slathering on a lot of it. While I'm sure you've all put a lot of effort into planning how you get the stuff on, most of you have only a very vague idea how to get it off again. Let me help. In general, the easiest way to get makeup off is the same way you got it on. All makeup is, is pigment in a skin-safe solvent. If you know how you stuck the stuff onto your face, you know how to get it back off. Powders like loose pigment (Maybelline Color Tattoo pots, loose powder) or pressed cakes (most dry eyeshadows, compacts of setting powder/bronzer/highlighter) stick to your skin because of the natural lipids on the surface. You get them off the same way you get the natural oil off your face, ideally a gentle soap or face wash, and a lot of water. Thin liquids like liquid foundations are generally based on distilled water. If it smears a lot when you sweat, this is your culprit. Soap/...

I've discovered some very interesting things about Indian tailoring. Why am I tinkering with Indian tailoring? Well, because I ordered a bunch of Indian kurtas, and they all needed to be let out at the bust.  Why did I order a bunch of Indian kurtas? Because that's what you wear when you take kathak, one of the seven(-ish) forms of classical Indian dance.  Why am I in a classical Indian dance class? Honestly, at this point, your guess is as good as mine. My old flamenco teacher is semi-retired and I don't see her too often anymore, but she held an open class at a little local dance festival a couple of months ago, so I dropped in to visit. The next class over was one of the Indian things with the ankle bells, which turned out to be kathak . You all know me and shiny, noisy objects, so I stayed for that. The teacher is apparently just getting settled in here in Boston, so I gave her a list of places I knew of that rented out studios and sent her a few links for local arts gr...

I have found out why the MSPCA was told these guys were bitey. It's mostly Yogi, and he's not biting. He's investigating . Rats use their mouths when they play, just like puppies. When they bite out of fear or anger, it's a very quick strike, very bloody, and you don't get your finger back in a hurry. When they bite during play, they don't chomp very hard -- just hard enough that the other rat feels it and knows he's gettin' got.  Yogi has been systematically testing my hand to see how hard he can toof me while he plays. I offer him my hand, he looks at me a second, then he slowly and deliberately puts his teeth on my knuckle and bites down a little bit. I go 'eep!' and jerk my hand away, then slowly give it back. And the next time he tries it, he's a little bit more gentle.  This is totally normal for a rat, but doesn't usually go over well with little kids. They feel teeth and think they've been bitten for real, then start shrieking...