One of the most insightful and amatory questions to ask a girl when on a first date with her, aside from “what’s your cup size?” and “do you shave in a pattern?” is: “what’s your absorbency rating?”

In the UK the range of absorbency (of menstrual fluid by tampons) is as follows: Lite (light flow) 6g and under / Regular (light to medium flow) 6-9g / Super (medium to heavy flow) 9-12g / Super plus (heavy flow) 12-15g / Super plus extra (very heavy flow) 15-18g

I tried this question during a lovely first date in an otherwise underwhelming restaurant:

“What’s your absorbency rating?”
“My absorbency rating?”
“Hm-hm. Yeah. What kind of tampon do you need? Two drops? Four drops?”
“Oh, five drops.”
“Really?
“Hm-hm.”
“You’ve got a nice free flow? Plenty of blood and uteral inner lining coming out?”
“Pretty much. It’s actually 15 grams. On a normal day.”
“Grams. That’s odd. You’d think they’d measure blood in centilitres or something. Or is it the weight of a tampon after use?”
“It’s not just blood, that’s why.”
“Oh, right. Of course.”
“There’s chunks.”
“Right, right. But wait, how do you know it’s 15 grams? Did you measure it? Like, catch it in a measuring cup?”
“Yeah, I squatted over a measuring cup all day. No, of course not. It’s not like it all comes out in one go.”
“How did you do it?”
“Well, first I tried to wring it out of the tampons after I felt something was happening. Can you imagine? Really bad idea. Messy. Lost most of it. Stupid, stupid idea. But then I used menstrual cups. Brilliant. Poured it out into a measuring cup, then weighed the measuring cup on my kitchen scale minus what it weighed without the fluid. 15 grams. And of course washed it out later before putting flour and sugar in it when making pumpkin pie. In the measuring cup, I mean. Not my vagina.”
“Oh, I got that.”
“And since you’re interested, I have a fun story to tell.”
“Go ahead.”
“I once traced a rather bad smell back to my vagina.”
“Your vagina smelled?”
“Yeah, quite badly. The kind of smell where flies drop dead.”
“There were flies?”
“No! It’s a figure of speech, I guess. If there’d been flies near, they’d have dropped dead. From the smell.”
“Right, right.”
“So anyway, I thoroughly wash my vagina. Thoroughly. I used several drenched cloths, vaginal soap, normal soap… I was almost reaching for the dishwashing liquid and drain cleaner.”
“Drain cleaner…”
“And I just can’t get rid of the smell for more than a few minutes. So eventually I let myself be coaxed into seeing a doctor.”
“Who coaxed you?”
“My then-boyfriend.”
“Is this incident why you broke up?”
“No, that was because of an unrelated depilatory incident. I liked grooming him, but one time he freaked out about me having gotten too enthusiastic. I think he was overreacting, and so do my friends, but that’s his problem.”
“Yeah, and the vagina smell?”
“Oh, the doctor found an old tampon.”
“Found… in you?”
“Where else? Yes, in me. Nestled pretty snugly. Except it was falling apart. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed that. But I’m all clean now. As clean as can be. Although I do still lift guys up to my face after they’ve been below for a few seconds, to examine their expression. If there’s even the fadest hint of disgust I can’t go through with it. But if he genuinely looks like he’s enjoying it down there, I’ll come like a crazy hag.”
“Wow.”
“That’s just what it’s like to be a woman.”

It was a great conversation starter, and the date slowed down after we’d stopped talking about it. So I returned to the subject one more time when our main courses arrived:

“Have you ever heard of the song Gorging On Menstrual Chunks by the band Gutrot?”

“No.”
“Taste the waste?”
“No.”
“Shame.”

A chronicling of passionate admiration, spiders, and goats.

First there was the very amusing exchange of short emails between Spider Guy and a library lady:

http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html

This struck a chord with me. It struck several chords. It struck a fair bunch of chords, but in a harmonious fashion.

I then sent a loving message of admiration, explaining how I wanted this man’s babies. He replied magnanimously, accepting my proposal and promising a bright future of owning a monkey and starting a goat farm together. My next reply was longer and more stalkerish, to which Spider Guy did not reply. This, understandably, to my great disappointment. I might include excerpts of some of these emails at a later stadium. Don’t rush me! Maybe you should empty your fridge!!

After almost two weeks of silence (in which I had a mildly exciting holiday, thank you) I realised I had been abandoned, that there would be no babies or marriage or goats or monkeys. My sorrow was great and I ate many a tasteless biscuit while lamenting my fate.

Taking pity on me, a colleague suggested therapy through Hitler spoof, to express my emotions by somehow bringing spiders and lost love into a scene from the film Der Untergang (The Downfall). Here be the result:

Mo’ Bros and Sistas gather here, Movember is near! Oh dear, what does this mean?

Movember (the month formerly known as November) is a moustache growing charity event held during November each year that raises funds and awareness for men’s health. So you can see it both as a laudable charity as well as a good excuse to “harvest your own private garden of manliness smack dead on your face”.

Guys: when Movember starts you are to start with a clean-shaven upper lip, then just let it grow!

Girls: recruit Mo’ Bros and/or sponsor them! if you have a moustache, see above.

Mr Mackerel is not physically able to grow hair, but he will grow a truly glorious one via the geometric patterns that make up his ethereal presence. Oh yes. Oh yes indeed. Do not underestimate Mr Mackerel.

This post will be added to with image examples, styling tips and perhaps the facial hair progress by Gleeful Sincerity visitors?

A man by the name of Jon Dyers has created a magnificent blog about his ventures into facial hair:
He is attempting to create every beard type on the canvas of his face.
And provides a handy chart of all the beard types he grows and grooms.

Mr Mackey:

Day 2

Day 6

photo credit: ste3ve

Having grown up in dreamlike dimensions of monsters, demons and ever-changing landscapes, it is easy for Mr Mackerel to understand the human consciousness and how the brain can be influenced. Leave that to Mr Mack! (He likes the smell of cinnamon muffins baking in the oven. He likes watching the mesmerising rainbow swirls in oil droplets on water, and the faintly gurgling sound of puppies discussing ethics beneath it.)

Mr Mackerel needs to polish some shoes, so he can focus and stop thinking.

First, as promised, the three easy steps to a hellish nightmare beyond imagination. If you’re a healthy person without sleep disorders, read below how to induce sleep paralysis. You will wake up, but your body won’t. You will feel like you’re in a coma and be absolutely terrified and panicked. And in that paralysed state your mind will hallucinate in a way normally reserved for people on an acid trip gone horribly wrong. The most well-reported vision is of people seeing a demon on their chest, choking them and raping them violently, more vividly than a dream has any right to be. It is the origin of the legend of the succubus and incubus. But many other nightmare visions can be involved, including auditory hallucations of sudden loud distorted sounds or the sound of someone calling your name.

The following steps are not 100% guaranteed to traumatise you, but they certainly help.

1. Sleep on your back.

2. Sleep irregularly.

3. Take daytime naps.

A result from these steps:

It was time for my 20 minute morning nap (of the Everyman sleeping schedule), and I was having dreams as soon as I closed my eyes, even though I wasn’t sleeping yet (I could open my eyes, close them, and the dream would still be there).

I was seeing a living room out the eyes of an African-American boy in his early teens and I said something I shouldn’t have said to one of my sisters, and she and the rest of my family asked what I meant by what I said. I couldn’t really explain it and to avoid having to explain myself I ran outside the house, though they followed me to the front door calling ‘my’ name (Michael! Michael!). It felt extraordinarily real.

Then there was a more typical dream, and I realised that I was in fact dreaming. I tried to see if I could control it, with only minor fleeting successes. I decided to create a new dream. I decided I wanted to try and play an Escape the Room puzzle in my mind. It’s a Flash game where you’re in a locked room and you have to find items in the room and combine or use them to eventually unlock the door. Hence, escape the room.

The room was just there immediately, though I have no idea whether it had a solution. In front of me was a computer and a desk. I looked at the desk. One of the drawers seemed to have a label on it. I took a closer look at the label, zooming in and out as if my eye were a camera lens until I could get it sharp. I was beginning to decipher it, but got fed up with it and decided to look at the screen of the computer. It was off, but I saw a dark silhouette in there (perhaps my reflection). There was this strange pull coming from the screen. I tentatively got up close to it and it tried to draw me in. I felt like I was in that screen myself, but I also felt like it would be a really bad idea to give into this stronger and stronger pull emanating from it. I was beyond the point of return, however, not able to back away. Not able to resist the desire to just give in. And then I surrendered. I felt the weird actual physical motion of being sucked into it.

That’s where it happened.

I dropped into a dense greyness, dropping through layer and layer and layer (about seven of them) of grey static, feeling very strongly the feeling you have when looking down from a very high tower. Finally, shocked, I was left inside the grey, with nothing.

I was still lucid, still conscious of what was going on, so even as I was falling through the grey I immediately tried to open my eyes and wake up. That didn’t work… I tried to kick my legs, but I couldn’t feel my legs. I was aware that this was happening and could make decisions. I was scared, and tried to scream. I tried screaming as loud as I could, but it was straining and I had no idea whether any sound came from me. I hoped that at least my neighbours would hear it and get help. However, I decided at that point that my sleep deprivation had somehow caused me to go into a coma and hoped to alert anyone that I was still conscious. I couldn’t see, hear or feel anything on the outside, so I couldn’t know whether maybe I was already in a hospital by now or still in my bed. I couldn’t be sure of how much time had passed. So I screamed. I screamed incessantly and yelled for help as ‘loud’ as I could.

This seemed to last quite a while and I just kept hoping that someone on the other side would detect my elevated heart rate or whatever else. Once more I furiously tried to move my limbs, when I suddenly regained control over my body and immediately got out of bed.

I stood next to my bed, in shock, but it wasn’t over yet. This couple came into my room, a middle-aged couple. I realised something was still wrong when they completely ignored me and started using my bedroom. It was like I wasn’t there. It was like I had died and new people had moved in. I frantically tried to alert them to my presence, but they didn’t notice me at all. Then I woke up again and got out of my real, actual bed. It was an immense relief. Strangely, only 5 minutes had passed since I went to lie down.

I didn’t know it was Sleep Paralysis. “This leaves the person fully conscious, but unable to move. In addition, the state may be accompanied by terrifying hallucinations (hypnopompic or hypnagogic) and an acute sense of danger.” If I had known about it, perhaps I wouldn’t have panicked so much.

Interesting section on Wikipedia about the various names and explanations cultures around the world have given this experience:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis#Folklore

photo credit: MFS

LONDON – A gross creature which gobbles up a person’s tongue and then replaces it with its own body has been found in Britain for the first time.

The bug, which has the scientific name cymothoa exigua, was discovered inside the mouth of a mother of four during a violent dispute with a TfL employee at Earl’s Court tube station.

The 3.5cm creature had grabbed onto the woman’s tongue and slowly eaten away at it and drained its blood until only a shrivelled stub was left. It had then latched onto the stub and become the woman’s “replacement tongue”.

The 21-year-old woman was still able to speak, but barely coherently. Bystanders noted that the woman’s face became red as she yelled furiously to get her points across.

Scientists are very excited by the find

Dr Jim Bow of the Horniman Museum in South London told Metro newspaper: “We have always suspected the existence of this bug, but so far in all my 13 years at the museum I haven’t seen proof of this species, so it’s a remarkable find.”

Since its discovery the bug has been found in at least 17 more people, of 19 people examined who had come in contact with the woman. Medical specialists mention an alarming infection rate that could become or have already become a rampant epidemic.

It is not yet clear how the parasite can be warded off, but judging by the examined subjects there is an elevated risk for persons with a propensity toward chitchat, worry and complaint.

Freaked out

But don’t be too freaked out – scientists say the creature does not pose any lethal threat to humans. Affected persons do experience pain when speaking, but living with the parasite should be perfectly possible when speaking sparingly and softly.

A medical specialist wishing to remain anonymous was noted as saying: “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”