…I walked into a freezing cold conference room in the Windham Hotel, clutching about 36 blue-inked Uni-ball Onyx Roller Ball Pens and an equal number of mechanical pencils in my clammy paws and took the shit out of the mother fucking Illinois bar exam.

I have almost completely recovered from the experience.

To anybody else in the same or similar boat: IT IS ALMOST OVER! GOOD LUCK!

I love Project Runway. Does anybody else love Project Runway? The new season (and final one before the show jumps ship to Lifetime) starts this Wednesday, so let’s talk about Project Runway and how much we love it.

I’ve been reading through the bios on Bravo’s site (warning! The website features “round ups” of future episodes that may be considered spoilers for some folks (for an explanation, see here) but the bio section is pretty spoiler free) and Korto is my clear early favorite:

She is inspired by rich fabrics and textures and says her designs are intended for real, full-figured women.

Heck yeah! She also appears to be the fattest designer ever on the show. And she has fantastic hair.

And if my eyes and memory do not deceive me, this is the first season that Bravo has featured two black women in the competition. Let us all say a little prayer to St. Saint Laurent that Bravo will avoid the reality TV race/sexism habit of editing Black women to appear bossy, bitchy, and mean, and then kick them off to great fanfare sometime in the first two episodes.

My early least favorite contestant has to be Suede because HE GOES BY SUEDE. And because Madonna is his biggest fashion influence. Ugh.

Okay, take it away.

Why mainstream magazines are bullshit:

NO JEANS FOR YOU.

Here’s a close-up of the bottom row:

Sorry!

Nothing says, “YOU ARE A GIANT FREAK AND YOU WILL NEVER FIT IN” like a grid full of super fashionable jeans that don’t come in your size. Sorry!

via Sociological Images via Jezebel.

OH HAI!

Kate kindly alerted me to some baby otter news out of California, where wildlife rehabilitators captured Wilson the River Otter and his errant littermate after their madcap romp through the mean streets of Petaluma. Check the video for some super squeaky baby river otter cuteness.

I used to live around Lake Tahoe, where Wilson and his littermate are destined. I am confident they will like it better up there than I did.

And isn’t that picture (click through to the story and then click the pic for a bigger version) just beggin’ for the LOLcat treatment?

If you find yourself prefacing a question with, “This is a rude question, but…” MAYBE YOU SHOULD NOT BE ASKING THE QUESTION.

That is all.

For the one reader of this blog who does not also read Shapely Prose and The Rotund (and if you don’t, why the hell not?), I would like to draw your attention to a new project put together by Stacy Bias called “The Fat Experience Project.”

Here’s Stacy, from a message she sent me:

The goal of the Fat Experience Project is to map the global experience of fat in a way that is human, has a face, a heart, a mind, a body and a voice. The Fat Experience Project is an oral, visual and written history project which seeks to be a humanizing force in body image activism. By collecting and sharing the many and varied stories of individuals of size, the Fat Experience Project seeks to engage with, educate, empower and enrich the lives of people of size, our allies and the world at large.

As the project grows, it will be filled with first-person, non-fiction narratives (in text, video or mp3 format) that speak to the many and varied aspects of the life lived large. Some of the content will come from interviews already gathered on an extensive 2-month road trip (with the lovely Val Garrison) in both audio and video format. Some content will come from trips on the horizon. Most content will be submitted via the website by readers such as yourself.

It is my hope that the project will be a community tool to combat prejudice/stereotype/discrimination as well as to help externalize shame so it can discussed and dissipated. The things we keep silent about are the things that do us the most harm. Shared burden is lighter. I am hoping, as well, that the project may eventually be used as a humanizing resource for fat studies and social anthropology courses.

Sounds good to me!

It’s not like I expected any better from a Men’s Health article reprinted on the Health section of MSN’s website, but I was still annoyed after reading about the 8 Drugs Doctors Wouldn’t Take. I skimmed most of the article because most of the drugs doctors wouldn’t take are also drugs for which I have no need. Except for number five, Prilosec and Nexium.

Now, I don’t take prescription Prilosec or Nexium because my health insurance decided long ago when Prilosec became available OTC that it would be much better for them if I would use my own dollars to pay for this medicine, thanks. These days, I technically don’t take Prilosec at all, since Walgreens, bless ‘em, now sells a generic version. But I do take a proton-pump inhibitor, omeprazole, nearly every day. Sometimes, on bad days (like, for example, today), I take three or four of these fuckers.

I am certainly alarmed to discover that doing so might result in a heart attack as well as increase my risk of pneumonia and bone loss, but for right now, the possibility of developing those ailments feels distant and unlikely, whereas the incredible, breath-stealing, throat burning, wretch-inducing, gut-clenching, audible-moan-inciting pain that I experience when I don’t take the pills is quite immediate.* For the moment, I’m willing to gamble that “no likely connection” between proton pump inhibitors and heart attacks actually means “no likely connection” between proton pump inhibitors and heart attacks. And pneumonia and bone loss, because nothing ramps up the capacity for denial like chronic stomach pain, eh?

Still, given that the older I get, the greater the risks posed by omeprazole become, I would certainly like to discuss other options with my doctor. Despite my generally high regard for my personal doctor, I’m suspicious of the conversation given that one doctor quoted in the article recommends taking Zantac (at which my personal stomach issues LAUGH RIOTOUSLY because seriously Zantac, Tagamet, and those other histamine blockers are about as effective as eating this bowl of paperclips on my desk) and the other doctor suggests, of course, being thin:

“To really cure the problem, lose weight,” says Michael Roizen, M.D., chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic and co-author of “YOU: The Owner’s Manual.” That’s because when you’re overweight, excess belly fat puts pressure on and changes the angle of your esophagus, pulling open the valve that’s supposed to prevent stomach-acid leaks. This in turn makes it easier for that burning sensation to travel up into your chest.

I developed acid reflux when I was in my early 20s and weighed 130 pounds, and I have had it ever since–as a skinny person, chubby person, and a downright fat person. Since developing reflux, I’ve been skinny and then fat and then skinny and then fat again, and while my weight fluctuates like the tides, one thing that never goes away for any great duration is my searing stomach pain. (I have also suffered from acid reflux as a regular exerciser, as a slothful couch potato, as a pack-a-day smoker, as a only-smoke-when-I-drink-smoker, as a non-smoker, as a vegetarian, as an Atkins dieter, as a heavy drinker, as a tea-totaller (or, as close to a tea totaller as I ever get), as a coffee drinker, as a tea drinker, as a water drinker, as a stress-case, as a zen-like relaxed person, as a single woman, as a married person, as a red-head and as a brunette, as a resident of six different states, and as I pursued three different careers.) I know fat people with acid reflux. I know skinny people with acid reflux. I mean, hell, have you ever tried to eat with stomach acid roiling up into your esophagus? It’s a wonder that fat and acid reflux are linked at all.

Perhaps this is what the great Dr. Roizen is actually suggesting! Leaving your acid reflux untreated so that you are unable to eat, until you lose enough weight that the reflux magically corrects itself. Or you die. Whichever. I guess we’ll have to buy his book and find out.

*You know, I’m also sort of fascinated by this side effect (lol get it) of the over-the-counterization of pharmaceuticals. Before my doctor would write me a prescription for Nexium, back when it was prescription only, he subjected me to a few blood tests to make sure I didn’t have an ulcer. Satisfied that I did not have an ulcer, the doctor assumed I had acid reflux (there might have been some fat prejudice there, since I was fat the first time I actually sought treatment for chronic heartburn, although I’d experienced it for about eight years by then) and away I went. Shortly thereafter, my insurance company dropped proton pump inhibitors from their list of covered drugs and I have been self medicating ever since. When the pain gets worse, I take more pills. Every once in awhile, I skip a couple of days to see if whatever ails me has miraculously resolved itself and then spend the next three days in severe pain, doubling up on the pills, and eating nothing with a pH under 7. At this point, there could be a giant acid-producing alien parasite in my stomach and I would never know, because I don’t need to go to a doctor for this medicine, so why should I seek medical care for a condition that is, as far as I’m concerned, treatable. If inconvenient.

I don’t have much to add to copyranter’s take on this PSA, except to angrily purse my lips at the medical profession and send everybody over to First, Do No Harm. And maybe point out that I’d rather sit by myself and eat potato chips than play this those grabby, ill-proportioned high-waisted nerds, too, but I’m fat so of course I would say that.

From copyranter:

From the atrocious layout to the asinine headline to the awful illustration of children of yesteryear to the…what the FUCK does this visual even mean? Why is a basketball game being held on a see-saw? And teeter-tottering isn’t exactly a great fat-reducing activity. And the dire headline: …”like their lives depended on it.” Well, for the very small percentage of kids who played Russian roulette, I guess that’s true.

Riots Not Diets, originally uploaded by gaelx.

Gina at What About Our Daughters has taken Michelle Obama Watch life, and she’s looking for contributors!

If you use WordPress, you can add the RSS feed to Michelle Obama Watch on your side bar. It’s in the Dashboard under “Design” and then “Widgets.”