Little Fattie Gangsta Penguin

so i lost a bunch of weight over the past few months, intentionally, and i posted a picture of one of my least favorite body parts to FB (my tummy) and i got such an overwhelmingly positive response that i was kind of shocked. i mean 30lbs isn't nothing, but i'm still heavier than when a lot of people knew me and i'm still massively insecure about my body, but it just felt really good and safe and i appreciate it so much.

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/opinion/op_ed/2014/04/graham_justina_pelletier_treated_worse_than_a_terrorist

this has been getting a lot of traction on my FB feed lately, the gist of it is painting children's as evil monsters who are destroying a kid's family and health over a debatable diagnosis. i doubt we know the whole story, but the whole case just makes me uncomfortable.

right about now, seven years ago, i got diagnosed with mastocytosis. getting there was a tremendous undertaking that was constantly trainwrecked by bad doctors who misread tests, ignored pathology findings, ignored symptoms and instead went down paths that suited their own specialty. it was seriously insane. within a short time period i had doctors telling me i had grave's disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, failure to thrive, anxiety disorder, pretty much it just got to the point where it felt like doctors were throwing darts at a wall and just picking whatever they felt could stick. one of the biggest problems was that i was being sent to a ton of specialists and each specialist wanted to be the one to fix me, because that is what doctors do, that is what they want to do, they want to fix broken things.

i wrote about it at first, though hesitantly and generally in a white washed manner because i didn't want to really express the hysteria that was going on in my mind. i remember when one of my doctors gave me the diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy, sitting up with ethan for hours, reading every medical journal i could get my hands on, every report about epilepsy and sobbing that it -wasn't- the right diagnosis, that it barely made sense to me, that i knew that it wasn't right, in my gut, in my brain, i knew that wasn't what was wrong (and rereading the criteria for it now, she was really fucking reaching with that one). but neurology was her specialty and she was trying to find a neurological explanation for what was happening to me and since i had a lesion on my temporal lobe (which would later be explained by the correct diagnosis), went with that, since the testing for MS that i'd had had come back negative (and eventually the testing for epilepsy would too). i remember the day she told me she thought i had epilepsy, excitedly showing her resident that a bump on my hand would react if touched, telling the resident it was something called a darier's sign. i'd never heard of it before but it seemed sort of inconsequential at the time...i was having these weird episodes where i felt like i was choking, my heart felt like it was going to explode, my nose would start bleeding, and i felt like i was going to die, so i didn't really care if my skin seemed particularly sensitive...plus, years earlier i'd had a similar lesion tested by a dermatologist who determined that it wasn't skin cancer (which was the concern since i'd had a few bad burns and am pretty pale and have a family history of skin cancers), but that it did have an abnormally high number of mast cells in it but it was probably nothing and she could laser the remaining ones off if i was concerned about the aesthetic impact that had on my torso...so when it was pointed out that i still had weirdly reactive bumps on my skin, i didn't care, someone had already said they weren't a big deal.

and of course, in the long run, that overlooked symptom ended up being the first one that, when i saw the -right- doctor, was the one that got me on track to getting a diagnosis that wasn't based on trying to cobble unrelated symptoms together, something that would get discovered a few days later by a (thankfully different) dermatologist i saw randomly for something else, but i've gone into that story a bunch of times and it doesn't bear repeating.

rereading my journal from that time period, i'd stopped writing about all my doctor appointments and all the tests that were being run because i felt like i was going insane. while my health had never been particularly good, it had exploded that spring, into a downward spiral that no one could adequately explain, just throw darts around and try to find something that made sense. i was tired of saying "we think we found an answer" only to follow it up with "oh nevermind, false alarm" because the whole process was so tiring. going on medications that made me worse was so tiring, being sick was so tiring, having all sorts of invasive procedures was tiring, and after every failed appointment, every frustrated specialist, every night in the ER, i was becoming more and more convinced that i was losing my mind.

then i randomly saw the right doctor who was able to see the entire picture and present me with the correct answer, one that has been, for the past 7 years, indisputable. every thrown dart hit a bullseye. it was no longer trying to cobble pieces of different puzzles together, it was real, it was incurable, but it was over. i can't say i was happy, but i was relieved. though in hindsight i can't say i'm not angry. -2- separate doctors had confirmation that i had some abnormal amount of reactive mast cells (the dermatologist who offered to laser them off as if my only concerns were cosmetic, and the neurologist who excitedly showed the darier's sign to her resident) but instead of looking at the whole picture, they focused on neurology and aesthetics respectively. if either one of them had been willing to actually think outside of their boxes, they could have put the picture together, but they didn't. they were short sighted by their specialties.

this was -nothing- compared to when i had to go through some psychological testing later on down the road for SSDI. this is par for the course for the hearing and of course you see a court appointed psychologist and take a standardized test to determine what's wrong with you. they don't talk to you, they don't look at your medical chart, you just take a standardized test, after which they interview you. when i got the results back, i was literally told that i suffered from a somatoform disorder that was responsible for the exact same symptoms that were textbook for the bone marrow disorder that i had, a disease that was confirmed through blood, skin, urine, and bone marrow testing, a disease that i clearly had, there was absolutely no room for interpretation. so somehow, ignoring the fact that getting diagnosed with mastocytosis takes on average -10 years- from onset of initial symptoms, i was told that up until the day of my diagnosis, my symptoms were purely psychological and that somehow I just managed to manifest the exact set of symptoms for a disease i'd never heard of, that practically no one had heard of, and that once i was diagnosed with the physical ailment, i was somehow cured of my somatoform issues.

-this- specifically is what creeps me out about the case in the link i posted above. i literally had a doctor tell me that while the mastocytosis remained undiagnosed, the symptoms it caused were solely psychological, even though i had mastocytosis during that time period, it just happened to be undiagnosed. HOW DOES THAT WORK? i'd never heard of masto before i was diagnosed with it, i didn't go doctor hunting trying to find one that would diagnose me with some other mast cell disorder that defies pathology (it exists, it's called MCAD) it was literally someone saying to me, with the utmost amount of confidence that I was totally healthy until I wasn't and that the fact that i was symptomatic prior to diagnosis was totally unrelated to the disease i was diagnosed with. that the -day- i was diagnosed was the day that i became physically ill and that everything else prior to that was essentially coincidental. that i manifested symptoms for a disease that i didn't even know that i had.

that's really fucking scary when you think about it. at least in my case, i was a grown woman with a pack of doctors behind me who called bullshit on that and did so very quickly. but if i was a kid? if i didn't have someone as amazingly supportive as ethan to have my back during the whole thing? it would be a nightmare. honestly, it was a nightmare, because i felt judged, i started to second guess everything, even though my bone marrow clearly spells out that i have, and have had for a while, a pretty serious physical ailment. but some standardized test said differently and that scared the hell out of me. it reminded me of every doctor who stubbornly tried to fix me as long as fixing me meant that i fell under their area of expertise, all the false starts, all the misdiagnosis, all of it came rushing back and it was paralyzing. but i had the agency to not have to be seen by those doctors, to choose my own, hell i could've just not seen any doctor if i wanted to, because i was an adult and that was my right. so this case with the pelletier kind of freaks me out, only because i've -seen- the other side of doctors trying to do what is best and failing miserably in the process. i lived it firsthand, and honestly, there's a really good chance that my health could've deteriorated a lot more than it did had i not had a massive stroke of luck that to this day i swear is a miracle*.

i don't doubt that the doctor's at boston children's have her best interests at heart, i really don't. rare diseases though, are tricky, and rare incurable diseases are even more frustrating for doctors because they like to fix broken things, and some of us are unfixable.

that said, because i want to end this on a positive note, i've been sick for 7 years. at times it sucks and is annoying. i'm missing out on all the fancy cocktails, on gastropubs, on lots of random stuff that i was sort of holding off to do "later". however i've adapted, and i think i've done a great job of it. in some ways i'm probably healthier than i was prior to my diagnosis. i eat better, i exercise more efficiently, i take care of myself better overall. i don't find myself battling against the restraints that this disease has put on me, i've just tried to find ways to cheat the system or just accept it for what it is. knowing what was wrong me with afforded me those opportunities. having doctors work together in concert with each other afforded me those opportunities, having a phenomenal partner afforded me those opportunities, refusing to see myself as a lost cause afforded me those opportunities. i hope that things with pelletier and boston children's eventually get to the point where she can say the same things.


*seriously, the doctor who saw the constellation of symptoms and put them together was sitting in for the first dermatologist i'd seen, as she was on maternity leave. then he left boston right after getting me on the right path with the diagnosis and directing me to doctors he knew were better suited to treat me. it was like he just came out of nowhere, saved my life, and vanished. it's remarkable beyond words to me. to this day i cannot believe how lucky i was that he happened to be the doctor i saw, that that first idiot was out on maternity leave, or that he knew my future immunologist and had happened to see a few cases of masto in children. so many random pieces had to fall into place for that to happen that 7 years later i -still- can't get over it.

So I'm a gamer, which is no surprise to anyone ever. Pax East was this weekend and I was sad that I couldn't go and see my friends since I'm on the wrong coast for these sorts of things, but then I remembered all the rapey transphobic misogynistic stuff that PA has not been held accountable for and felt super conflicted. I went to the first PAX and had a lot of fun, I have friends in the gaming industry who had booths there, on one hand it would be a very fun time, but on the other I don't know if I could entirely get behind giving these guys any money, or as a female consumer, lend any sort of legitimacy that how they treat their female audience is even remotely ok by going.

these articles sum it up better than i could:
http://www.wired.com/2013/09/penny-arcade-expo-dickwolves/
http://elizabethsampat.com/quit-fucking-going-to-pax-already-what-is-wrong-with-you/
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Dickwolves
http://debacle.tumblr.com/

the long and short of it is that they wrote a comic that used male rape as a joke. the premise of the comic itself was pretty funny, based around the idea that in a game you might get a quest to go save 5 people from a horrible fate, potentially leaving behind other victims because you've finished your quest, so fuck those people you left behind. you got your XP, so on to the next quest. however the fact that it needed to be rape, because rape is apparently the funniest or most horrific thing that can happen to a person, seemed pretty juvenile, but it's Penny Arcade, so what do you expect?

As a gamer, well I guess as a female gamer (a distinction I find tedious since at this point 50% of gamers are women, but whatever) the threat of sexual violence is pretty common both in games or whenever you step into the cesspool that is multiplayer gaming. I admit that I play a lot of bro type games and as a result, 9 times out of 10 at the end of a match, instead of hearing "good game" like my male teammates might, I end up hearing something about what a terrible and probably fat cunt I am and how I should play their team in a rematch where they will, inevitably, rape the shit out of me or that secretly my teammates are only playing with me because they want to fuck me and I probably really suck but I have my male teammates to hold me afloat. There are also the occasions where people on XBL will just start hitting on me, which is weird and awkward and obviously not appropriate since I'm playing Left4Dead, not Call of OKCupid or something. But after so many years of hearing verbal attacks on my gender, on my weight, and threats of sexual violence, you get used to it. Which really, really really really, is absolutely disgusting when you think about it.

I thought the need for the funny torture in the comic to be rape was unfortunate, but it also seemed like a total symptom of the source material of the comic. Gamers like to throw the word rape around constantly so it seemed like a no brainer that that would be the lowest hanging fruit that they reached for. What I wasn't expecting was their immature and completely hostile backlash toward fans who found the concept unpleasant. Instead of engaging in any sort of intelligent discourse with their female audience, they went and made team dickwolves t-shirts, one of the founders of PA said he planned on wearing his to the conn, quickly there was a team of people planning on having a team dickwolf flashmob. All of this was accepted if not encouraged by PA. Imagine being a rape survivor surrounded by people wearing shirts that condoned rape as a plot device or a joke (since I am well aware that the rape referenced in the comic was happening to cartoon characters and was being committed by fake mythical creatures). I'm not saying that it would be the most triggering thing in the world, but at the very least it would be incredibly uncomfortable and awkward. If you were female, not only is there the potential level of discomfort that you're trying to break into a boys club (since girl geeks either get hit on mercilessly or get their geek cred questioned mercilessly), now you're surrounded by a bunch of people who think that making a joke out of rape is a free speech issue or a political statement. It's kind of gross to say the least.

Then one of the founders came out with a TON of transphobic bullshit, the long and short of it was refusing to acknowledge that pre op transwoment had the right to refer to themselves by their gender since "only girls have vaginas" and then gave some halfassed apology after their fanbase made it clear that this was more fuckery on par with the dickwolves thing.

so for months on FB i've seen a lot of people discussing PA and how they're turning into a disgraceful corporation that clearly has issues with women, rape victims, and transgendered people. Like, if they were making the same comments about African Americans or Hispanics or something, I imagine the furor would've been a hundred times louder, but it's way easier to push women and transfolk off into the sidelines in the world at large, let along in a microcosm like gaming. but i saw people talking about all the things that PA were guilty of, and I was surprised to see that many people were opting -out- of going to PA. some of the loudest critics were opting -to- go to PA, which was confusing. I don't even mind that there are people who ignored the entire debacle, but the idea of being critical of the organization and then going to their conn seemed sort of perplexing. I think because all the previous criticisms of the organization felt like "Wow this person is an ally, they get why PA are shady and they're vocal about it" which seemed to get flipped on its head by then giving them money to attend their con.

Because really, I doubt that Jerry & Mike look into the throngs of people at the world trade center and think "yeah, those are the people who find our politics questionable". no, they just see dollar signs. they've managed to build a multimillion dollar comic and convention series based off of making misogynistic, rapey, and transphobic comments that they've never truly been held accountable for, and as long as their cons are sweeping successes, they will continue to do so.

and it's hard. one person I spoke to said that they went as a chance to be the change that they wanted to see. I think that is an admirable but potentially short sighted ideal. On one hand, yeah, going to PAX and making a political statement would be a great thing, however instead due to the way the con is set up, instead it sounded like it turned into like minded people discussing their feelings with each other, but with no platform. They weren't offered a panel, instead they had a "diversity hub" and unisex bathrooms. as a gamer i'd probably want to check out the wastelands or indie games booths before a "diversity hub" and as a woman i'm not sure i'd be too keen on unisex bathrooms, I don't know how a transgendered person would feel. Being the change that you want to see is a very valid argument for doing something, but in some circumstances it seems like a losing battle where a few small voices lost amongst the chatter will easily be lost. People go to PAX to discuss gaming, not gender politics. I've been vocally critical of the Church of Scientology, but there's no way in hell that I could affect any change by joining the church and giving them my time and money, and sadly the way that PAX is set up right now, going to the con and talking to people who agree with you seems about as likely for success. It's even harder though, because -going- to PAX doesn't seem to be any more or less effective than -not- going to PAX.

It sucks though, because if I were in Boston or Seattle, I can't even promise that -I- wouldn't go to PAX. because again, I have friends who go, friends who have booths there, and realistically they're the largest end user gaming convention out there. For me, they're also the most convenient since Seattle is close and I have a lot of friends in Boston. It starts to feel akin to raging against how corrupt the government is. You feel hopeless, powerless, or you possibly over optimistically hope that you can somehow affect some change from within. i'm not trying to imply that anyone who went to PAX is a bad person, I'm just surprised by the vocal opponents who went. Actually that's dishonest, there is some judgement, but i think it stems more from a place of hurt because as a female gamer who has had to put up with more than their fair share of rape threats in MP games, there is a part of me that would like to see stronger allies, though in the same respect I can't even say that -I- would be that stronger ally if PAX were in LA or I were in Boston. It's not an easy decision by any stretch of the imagination.

It's frustrating because I appreciate people taking the time out to post their feelings on FB, however I also feel like it's as useful as talking into an echochamber. On FB we're talking to our likeminded friends, people who mostly agree that PA has not really apologized for their use of rape culture as plot devices, misogyny and transphobia. That's the easy route to being an ally...and it needs to go further than that. But I guess I just feel that fun trumps politics in a lot of cases, and that's not good enough. Though as I've said, I don't even know if I could hold myself up to the same yardstick I'm measuring others, and that's probably the most depressing thing of all.

the many different faces of Elizabeth that exist

I want to start this out by saying that I love the Bioshock series. It's rare to come across FPS's that are so smart and so brilliantly designed. Like most things that end up with a ton of sequels, I think that the story quality has kind of gone down over the course of the series (I think I'm in the minority in that I didn't think BS Infinite was the best game ever created ever), but I also think that is to be expected. The first game was a scathing take on objectivism that had a horrifying twist 3/4 of the way through, and they sort of ran with the horrifying twist 3/4 through bit while dropping the politics.

Anyway, I could talk about the series for pages and pages and pages, but I'm not. Instead I'm going to focus on BS Infinite and the DLC for it, which as a gamer, as a woman, was just incredibly unsettling to experience, and honestly kind of ruined the whole series for me, at least for the moment. As a gamer, I've often found situations that have made me uncomfortable as a woman. In a lot of ways, sadly, gaming and feminism are sort of at odds with each other. In the same vein though, I am loathe to turn every moment of pop culture that I expose myself into a platform to discuss how women in media are treated, since it often seems like low hanging fruit, however what I just played has been possibly one of the most horrific story arcs of a female protagonist I've ever seen. This is sort of exacerbated by the fact that it happened in a series that overall has been lauded for being above the typical bro-bullshit that tends to permeate gaming, especially FPS games.

( I'm putting this behind a cut because I'm going to post a ton of spoilers )

So we heard about the "Dumb Starbucks" opening in Los Feliz this weekend and decided to check it out. At that point, press was pretty minimal about the store and people were throwing around theories that Banksy was behind it, as he's been threatening to take over LA the way he did New York last year. We'd spent a good portion of the afternoon just wandering around West Hollywood enjoying the weather so we figured at the very least we'd drive over to see the Dumb Starbucks.

We got there and the line was pretty bad. I wouldn't say it was epic, it seemed like it would be a worthwhile venture to hang out, get free coffee, and just see what it was about. There were signs all over stating that the store technically fell under parody law, was ] an art exhibit, was donation driven, was free, it was all pretty confusing and conflicting which obviously made it more interesting.

Ethan and the dog got in line while I went to check out the actual storefront, which was not possible because the windows were blacked out which of course made it that much more tantalizing. There were two men hanging out in the parking lot selling "Dumb Starbucks" hats & stickers, again for a "suggestion donation". Which was bizarre because who the hell bootlegs a coffeeshop/art gallery/massive public troll? I looked at what they were selling and it looked identical in quality to what the people leaving the coffeehouse had, just the Starbucks logo with the word "Dumb" in front of it.

I went back in line and hung out with Ethan, the dog, and a bunch of other random people, and we discussed why we were there, was it worth it, why did this seem appealing, everyone sort of seemed either confused or excited. Again a lot of people thought this was Banksy or Shepard Fairy, or at least someone with money since clearly this was about as posh an operation as you'd get going in less than 24 hours. The signage out front looked great, the barista's had high quality uniforms, there were branded umbrellas outside the store, before even taking rent or all the free food and coffee into account this stunt had to have cost at least $15k or so.

The line moved -incredibly- slow. People would trickle out and occasionally you'd hear someone talk about how terrible the coffee was. Some people had ceramic mugs (which I coveted), some people left with hats, but the most common thing was just regular paper cups, though EVERYTHING was double cupped so that the cup with the logo wasn't stained with coffee, which of course led people to believe that these things were art and therefore would clearly have some sort of value (again because banksy).

there's only so much time you can spend hanging out in line talking to your spouse or watching your dog play with kids before you get kind of bored...i think for me that hit at about the 1 hour mark, which was also about the point in time where I absolutely refused to give up and go home. I'd put in enough time standing in line and not really knowing why I was doing it (because quality issues aside, I don't drink coffee!), but goddamnit there was no way i wasn't going to see the inside! So I started looking on my phone to see if I could find anything out about Dumb Starbucks. At that point a lengthy Buzzfeed article had been posted that showed the interior of the store, dumb Starbucks stuff was being sold on ebay, but overall no one knew what the hell was going on. I just knew that I wanted to see the inside and that i'd put enough time in that i wasn't going to be deterred. (also i heard they had Dumb Norah Jones cds and I kind of wanted one of those as I have a bootlegged version of Bankys' Paris Hilton cd and thought they would look cute together)

eventually we got inside. we we the last group of people let inside and at that point it was actually kind of scary because people were pressing their faces up against the glass and it totally looked like something out of Dawn of the Dead. Throughout this part of the experience, the "dumb baristas" kept stressing that everything inside was crap, that everything from the coffee to the pastries was just stale stuff that they'd picked up at Vons, but no one cared. So it was a little creepy feeling trapped in the Dumb Starbucks with hundreds of people lingering outside trying to get in, but we'd made it, our efforts had paid off.

the inside was pretty mediocre. it looked like a really stripped down starbucks that didn't have working refrigerator cases or cash registers. the only things that worked were the overhead lights and the coffee machines, which were incredibly slow. There were 2 people manning the entire operation, though by the time that we had gotten inside one of them was essentially the defacto security guard making sure the front door stayed locked (i also think he either called the police or a private security firm to clear the people out of the parking lot as the mob quickly dispersed and then reformed) but yeah, the most notable thing about the interior of the Dumb Starbucks was how astoundingly mediocre it was. It wasn't clever, there were no funny signs on the walls or anything mocking large scale retail culture, no biting satire, nothing that was all that interesting. it was just kinda boring. the only cool thing for us at least, was since we were at the end of the line, we actually got to talk to the employees a bit, and it was clear that they were pretty heavily scripted in what they could and couldn't say, but it seemed like they had at least let their guard down a little, since by that point we were all just locked in the store together, where it was FAR less crowded.

We got our personalized coffees (well ethan got a coffee, I got a cup) and headed out...feeling completely and utterly dumb. all in all i think we waited in line for about 2 hours. on one hand it was cool because we had no real plans that day other than wandering around neighborhoods, we got to see a ton of people, the dog got to play with lots of people, and it was a nice day to hang out outside. We had conflicting expectations on the whole thing, whether it was getting a piece of banksy or some other renegade art, it was kind of funny to be doing something that we were essentially questioning the whole time, and in the end it truly was about as dumb of an experience as you could have, but i kind of loved that, and it's not really lessened by the fact that it turned out to be some stunt that was backed by Comedy Central. On one hand, yeah I am sure I could've been more productive with my Sunday afternoon, but I wanted to see what the hype about Dumb Starbucks was, I didn't have the highest expectations, and it was so astoundingly mediocre and so open about its own mediocrity that it was pretty fun. but also completely dumb, and i feel like that is the best part, Dumb Starbucks completely and thoroughly lived up to its name.

today was a great day, we went on a hollywood scandal tour and ate gf pecan pie and ice cream and fried chicken. quite a break from the whole30 for sure, but i'll just tag a couple days on the end of the month to make up for it.

so i made this mix in case there was a swap, but that did not appear to happen, so instead i'm going to share this with everyone else. it's not the most current music, but it's music i either just loved or learned to or taught with

http://dspmusic.org/mixes/BridgetMix2013.zip

these two articles are amazing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/magazine/can-the-bulldog-be-saved.html
http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/100-years-of-breed-improvement/

i love irish wolfhounds, i think they are the most regal and beautiful dogs in the world. i'm sure the fact that i grew up around them influences this, but they are huge, gentle dogs that are just astounding. they also don't live very long as they are super prone to mast cell cancer, bone cancer, and a whole host of pulmonary problems. the breed went extinct in the 1700s and was revived using deerhounds and great danes in an attempt to bring back the massive wolf killing dogs that one would read about in the book of kells. however since this was done quickly, you end up with a giant dog that has a heart and lungs more optimal for a smaller dog, meaning that its body worked twice as hard, even at rest, resulting in a very short lifespan. the last time my parents were looking into getting a wolfhound (about ten years ago) they noticed that the ones being bred by the most reputable breeders were smaller than the ones they had previously had, and didn't really like that aesthetic, which is a shame because even though it wasn't as awe inspiring, it meant the dogs might stand a chance at being healthier. sadly over the past few years the wolfhouds i've seen have been fucking huge, way larger than any of the ones I had growing up so I guess that more breeders are aiming for aesthetics again vs overall health of the dog.

when i decided i wanted a dog, i knew that getting a wolfhound was a bad idea. we live in an apartment, we move a lot, we don't know if we're putting down roots in LA, ethan had never owned a dog before, there were a whole host of reasons why getting a giant breed was not a good idea. plus there is a part of me that sort of feels guilt in the whole idea of helping perpetuate a breed that is not healthy, or helping perpetuate the current standard which is not particularly healthy. in reading about breeds i realized i really liked a lot of the characteristics of bulldogs.

before we go any further, yes i know that i could totally be viewed a privileged asshole for buying a dog vs adopting. but at the time we had a very old cat and i wanted to bring a puppy into the house. i also wanted a dog that wouldn't be a detriment for finding an apartment and considering how many dogs/puppies in shelters out here are part pitbull that wasn't a tenable situation since most apartments out here won't rent to you if your dog is even part pitbull (which is a shame because they're awesome dogs). but even aside from that, i wanted a dog that i wanted. i wanted a puppy since it would more easily integrate with the cats and wouldn't be bringing any baggage into the house with it (since hey, dogs don't like being abandoned), i wanted a smaller dog, so i made the choice to buy vs adopt. i've always been responsible in not buying from mills or pet stores, adopting when i can, not buying wild caught exotics, so i sort of feel that if i want to be selfish in selecting a companion animal, whatever. it's not like we don't already know i'm selfish.

one thing that i noticed the more i read about bulldogs was how unhealthy they were. heart disease, allergies, skin disease, eye problems, palate deformation that could lead to a massive host of breathing problems, just every goddamn problem in the book seemed to be wrong with this breed. which was really disheartening because they are so adorable. but the idea of spending $x on a dog and then piling up massive vet bills (or even worse vet bills that we might not be able to pay) seemed like a really bad idea.

from there i started reading about french bulldogs, another small breed i've always liked, and found that if they were bred well, they might still have some health issues, but markedly less than the english bulldog. so we started looking at breeders and Ethan found a woman in the OC and set up an appointment to meet her.

the first thing that struck me was that her dogs were zipping around her substantial yard (she owns a ranch as she also has horses). frenchies are more active than english bulldogs, but they're not really known for their stamina...but even before meeting the puppies we got to see their parents and even a grand parent tearing up the yard like nobody's business. the fact that the puppies grandmother (the grandfather was not on the premises) was alive and happy and super healthy was a sign in the right direction. we had to talk to the breeder for a while about what we wanted in a dog, what my experience in caring for dogs had been, what sort of time/money we were willing to dedicate to this pet, it felt almost like a job interview. she explained that she bred her dogs for health first and foremost. her dogs were all champions in agility as well as show, meaning that they were bred for endurance as well as appearance, however they all tended to have more accolades in the agility stuff. looking at pictures (as well as being there) it was obvious her dogs were more slender, had longer faces and larger noses than other frenchies that i'd seen. their chest's weren't as barrelled, their torsos were longer, their nostrils were wider, their heads weren't as massive, their hips weren't as thin, they mated on their own, their eyes weren't as big, they still looked awesome and clearly like french bulldogs, but slightly different. more like little boxers vs little torpid tanks. she was also super against fad or rare colors so i was sold on her ethics. then we met the puppies and bones just killed me. he was honestly sort of the opposite of what i thought i'd wanted but when i saw him i just knew he was perfect for me. i also talked with other reputable breeders in the SoCal area and the ones vetted by the AKC all said that the breeder we were thinking of getting bones from was a phenomenal breeder and also very picky who she sold dogs to.

a year and a half later and i'm still thrilled with the decision we made. honestly at first i was sort of concerned that he was too tiny or not husky enough (mostly because of seeing other french bulldogs that are way stouter than he is, because in the end i think i'm a big dog person at heart) but overall according to his vet, Bones is one of the healthiest frenchies she's seen. he has no spine or palate problems, his breathing is perfectly normal, he doesn't snore or click, overall he's just a happy, healthy, and awesome dog. i've taken some precautions like having him registered as an emotional support dog, (which is essentially the new medical marijuana) so that he doesn't have to fly in cargo when we travel since i don't want to risk the whole overheating thing...but he's small enough that he can fly in the cabin anyway since he fits in a carrier the size of carry on luggage. overall he's awesome except for being allergic to fleas, though to be fair, it's not like i want him full of fleas anyway so it's not like bathing him and cleaning the apartment is a real chore.

so when these articles started making the rounds, especially the ones about what breeds looked like 100 years ago vs how they look now, i totally got sucked into them. it's just really striking and sad in so many ways to see how breeds have been destroyed to attain physical characteristics that, like the irish wolfhound being ginormous, are in no way sensical other than aesthetics. so i poked around looking at vintage pictures of frenchies and was pretty psyched to see that the bear looks pretty similar to those pictures vs the ones of modern frenchies. obviously i completely lucked out when it came to this dog and i'm grateful that there are breeders who are being more attentive to health vs cartoonishly adorable dogs. the one thing that makes me nervous is if i want another frenchie (and i do) i worry that bones is an anomaly and the next dog we get will end up being some genetic train wreck or something. i'm trying my best to hold out and see what sort of frenchies are up for rescue, though truthfully i think i'd wait until wingnut passes away before bringing a rescue into the house since many of the ones i've seen aren't good with cats or just display levels of food or toy aggression that i think would be too much for a 10 year old cat. who knows though. i know i want bones to have a dog sibling at some point.

on a footnote completely unrelated but buried at the bottom because i have little faith that people actually read livejournal posts and that makes me feel most comfortable discussing this here vs fb or twitter because i feel like it could come across as some sort of self congratulatory bullshit, but that's not where this is going. there are a lot of homeless people in hollywood. one of the great things about the dog is that they want to play with him and he wants to play with everyone ever. which sort of turns into a good way to connect with people you might not otherwise. the end result being that i talk to a lot of homeless people (or in a lot of cases they just talk to the dog, but that's fine because he's kind of cooler than i am anyway). the weather this week has been unusually cold and is only going to get colder. so ethan and i decided to gather up a bunch of blankets and socks and clothing to give to people since it's going to be in the 30s at night. so last night was part 1 of a multi-night series of giving stuff out to people, which was moderately successful,but the best part, the reason it was only moderately successful? someone had beat us to it and had started handing out jackets earlier in the evening. how awesome is that? it's really goddamn awesome is what it is. i sort of went out there last night feeling like we were doing the bare minimum and feeling kind of disheartened about the world and my own contributions to it, and came home feeling so happy that someone else had taken some serious initiative in helping people out. i still feel so happy about it.

so yeah, my dog is awesome and i love him and i'm glad that while he really wouldn't exist in nature without selective breeding, i'm glad that he was bred ethically and that he's not a heaving snorting mess that can't walk a mile without passing out.

i keep wanting to update this thing to keep hope alive, but i find it hard to write "and then i did this cool thing and it was a lot of fun" or "i like walking the dog on hollywood blvd, it's fun" because really, i do sort of feel that when i'm happy with life, when i'm doing things, i tend to not have a lot to say about it.

last night ethan and i went to a comic shop to see a bunch of people rip on episodes of star trek MST3K style. it totally helped that one of the people ripping on the episode was wil wheaton, who managed to both give the audience interesting facts about the show while also being sort of ruthless about his experience with the producers. it was easily one of the funniest things i've seen in ages. like, hyperventilating funny.

tomorrow is thanksgiving which we're doing on the quiet side, then friday is record store day so i'll go brave amoeba to pick up a couple albums, otherwise i plan on just hanging out with ethan and going to see a taping of the talking dead on sunday.

i'm still astounded at how fun living in hollywood is. i still miss venice a ton, mostly because it's cleaner and people weren't getting shot down the street with quite as much frequency as here, but i'm really starting to enjoy hollywood a lot.

so hollywood is great for people watching, and even moreso on halloween, as we discovered last night.

the streets were flooded with people in costume. like, i've had to push my way through time's sq on new years eve to get to a concert, i've been to the thanksgiving day parade in ny, but last night was just intense.

neither ethan or i got dressed up. we went to a parking lot a block away to see a free rob zombie concert (meh) and afterwards we went home, made dinner, dressed the dog as jesse pinkman, undressed the dog, and took him for a walk. somehow in the short amount of time between leaving the concert and then going back out, the population of hollywood increased tenfold. the dog, oblivious to the serious risk he had of being stepped on by some drunken asshole, was thrilled...but it quickly got to the point where we had to pick him up as the crowds were just getting thicker (and drunker), and duck down a side street to get out of the chaos.

usually i feel pretty safe in hollywood at night. most of the violence that happens is either gang related or nightclub related and since i am not in a gang and don't go to nightclubs, i've got my invisible and perhaps unwarranted invisible wall of invincibility around me. last night, that wall crumbled in like, 5 seconds. at one point, we were walking and this group of 5 or 6 guys aggressively pushed past us. i noticed them because i liked their really heavy makeup (they were done up like the cast of dead presidents), but for whatever stupid reason, i remember thinking, "you could seriously fuck someone up and possibly get away with it because you'd be impossible to identify without the makeup". they made me uncomfortable, but i brushed it off since at that point i felt like anything would make me uncomfortable.

we walked the dog, but the whole walk just felt...it felt intense and hurried and weird. there were obviously thousands of people having a great time, but there were a lot of angry or drunk messes out there too, and for whatever stupid reason, i seemed more keyed into the vibe they were throwing off. (though i've increasingly realized i just have little to no patience for people who feel like the only way to celebrate is to get drunk. while at first my sobriety wasn't a choice, at this point is completely is, and i just find it so incredibly pathetic and tiresome to see people incapable of figuring out how a bike, a crosswalk, or a door works) I was just completely over crowds and shoving and wanted to go home.

we got home and i was looking at twitter and saw a picture of the guys who had pushed past us, having been arrested for beating some stranger to a bloody pulp, apparently very shortly after we'd seen them.

i set down to do some work (i tape hoops for hoopnotica) and about an hour into it realized that in the background i'd been hearing sirens and helicopters for at least half an hour. i went back to twitter (there's a feed that updates from an LAPD scanner) and it turned out there'd been a 700 person riot at a club 5 or 6 blocks away. of course no riot in LA is complete without people getting shot, so that happened a couple times. overall i think something like 80 people were arrested by the time i went to bed around 4am, the sky still thick with the sounds of helicopters and police sirens. i still felt safe, but wearied by the whole experience and just wanting to not deal with society for a little while.

then i woke up today to find out that someone had freaked out in LAX and shot up one of the terminals.

there are times where i feel like i am not cut out for la. where i miss the simplicity and tininess of boston, and this week is SO ENTIRELY one of those times.