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thelefthandedwifeisundercover:
nerdygirllove:
Data Raps about his cat
Data is the ultimate cat lady.
Caturday special.
(via runongirl)
Tagged: caturday
Posted on April 7, 2012 via Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses. with 70 notes
Source: nerdygirllove
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Facing Fear at the Barbell and in the Thunderdome
I noticed the blood when I reached into my chalk bag before the big deadlift work set. I was already intimidated by the weight I had put on the bar, 150 pounds, something I’d never done before. Seeing blood seeping from my pinkie nail bed and smeared on the finger turned anxiety into terror. It didn’t hurt, you see. I licked the blood, like a berserker tastes blood to run fearless into battle. It didn’t make me fearless.
I gripped the bar and pulled. It went up. I made the lift. It went down. The released breath I’d held in the Vaslava maneuver came out as a whispered “Jesus Christ”. For all my recent Mars worship, I still revert to ancestral forms of blasphemy in times of stress. I thought about taking the weight down back down to what I’d pulled comfortably last week. My finger was bleeding and I didn’t feel it. What other important pain was adrenaline hiding from me?
I almost didn’t finish that set at 150. Between almost didn’t and almost did there is no space at all in the bleeding moment, but afterwards, there is a chasm.
It was not easier the second time I pulled. When the weight went down I felt a little light headed. There was a tension like tears at the back of my throat. The third time was not easier, either. While I’d done the lift twice already, I also knew I’d be getting exhausted with each repetition. It only got easier on the last rep, because I wanted to check 150 off in the logbook, to say to myself and to others, I did it.
I didn’t laugh at the end of the set like I normally do when I set a new personal record. I racked my weights. I put the bar away. I stripped. I rushed to the shower. I did these things because these are the things one does. I felt no pain.
The water ran over me. I haven’t felt this beat up since I got the shit kicked out of me in the Thunderdome in 2007, I thought. Even my hands shook in the same exhausted way.
* * *
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“I feel no pain,” I said to the gloved medic examining my bloody nose after my five minutes in the Thunderdome. In as far as these things can be calculated, I had lost. It was only once I was on the ground, off the bungee cables, that I realized the crowd was deafening. It had been, a friend later told me, incredibly loud the whole time. They really like to see women fight. They really liked it when the other woman grabbed my braids.
“I feel no pain all. Nothing hurts,” I added. He sent me to the medical tent.
I nearly cried on my walk there, not because I was in pain, and not even really because I had found out that in the heat of battle I have hangups about playing dirty against someone else who plays dirty, but because I felt lonely. I am not the person I imagined myself to be before I entered the Thunderome. I am not a fighter. I am not vicious. I wanted so much to be vicious. I wanted to prove that in battle, even sort of a fake battle, a secret self, a fighter, would emerge from my quiet, cheerful self. I wanted someone else to tell me: you are badass.
* * *
The barbell lets me practice fear. I train my muscles and I train my mind. It has not yet gotten easier. Any time it gets easier, I add more weight.
The barbell gives me something the Thunderdome could not: an objective measure. Either I pick up the weight, or I don’t pick up the weight. The weight moves or the weight does not move. That’s it.
It doesn’t matter how I feel about it. There is a checkmark in my logbook. Next time I face the weights, I will have that knowledge to arm me. I won’t fear them any less, but I will have the capacity to hold more fear and pull anyway.
Tagged: deadlift weight lifting powerlifting barbell thunderdome fear women weightlifters women badass
Posted on April 5, 2012 with 4 notes
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Some Toughts Scribbled Between Sets
The body loves progressive challenge. Incrementally increasing the challenge creates a space where we are always in the sweet spot of difficult but not impossible. Weightlifting is like progression raiding except instead of getting nerfed by 5% every few weeks, the boss gets harder to meet you at the place of challenge. More weights are always avaialble. The only person who can cheat you is yourself.
Tagged: weights weightlifting raiding wow games challenge flow
Posted on March 5, 2012 with 2 notes
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A Weightroom of One’s Own
License to Lift The orange notebook where I track repetitions of the stitches that I knit and repetitions of the big three is my tiny passport into the country of Squat. The muscled border guards need only see numbers and hashmarks and the focused look on my reddening face. “Excuse me Could I Get a spot?” I mean, could a woman get a spot 'round here? A bit of space? A weightroom of one's own? A squat rack of one's own at least? I know I don't look like the type but turn my hands over and you can read my palm, my past, the yellow calluses on the pads. The natives are grunting but each day I flash my orange passport and take my place under the Olympic bar I drop down with more plates on the bar each time My rainbow socks flash and I get up again. Another hashmark in the book. I've been around, and more important: I'll be back.
Tagged: weightlifting powerlifting poetry poem squat feminism
Posted on February 28, 2012 with 11 notes
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amaditalks:
On Tuesday, after liveblogging my read-through of Pennsylvania’s HB1077, the bill which would force unwanted endovaginal ultrasounds on most persons seeking an abortion in the state, I sent a scathing email to my state representative, Harry Readshaw, who is a co-sponsor of the bill. To be entirely fair, I dislike my representative a great deal. He’s nominally a democrat, yet he’s entirely anti-choice, he also introduced a copy of the Arizona “papers please” anti-immigrant bill in this legislative session. I don’t know why he calls himself a democrat, but he does, and I hold him accountable. I wrote:
Dear Representative Readshaw:
I know this message will fall on deaf ears as you’re firmly committed to destroying my constitutional right to control my reproductive life, nevertheless, this legislation that you are co-sponsoring is both onerous and offensive and I feel it my responsibility as your constituent to let you know that your support of this bill completely erodes any possibility of my continued support for you.
Fact: there is no evidence, from actual empirical studies, that ultrasounds change people’s minds when they’re seeking an abortion. All that these “educational” ultrasounds do is add unneeded time, expense and delay to the process and, as a consequence, increase the number of medical complications that arise. If the goal is to improve women’s health, this bill is already a failure on its face.
Fact: More than 60% of those seeking an abortion already have had at least one child. they know what pregnancy is, how it works, and what continuing an unwanted pregnancy would mean to their lives and the lives of their families. they don’t need counseling, waiting periods or extra ultrasounds to “know” as per this “right to know” concept.
Women do have independent intellect. We are able to come to decisions about important issues in our lives without being handheld or spoonfed information, and if there’s information that women want or need to know, we are capable of asking for ourselves.
The arrogant overriding of women’s agency and presumption of women’s ignorance inherent in this bill, from its very first line, and the “right to know” language makes me wonder: if women are so dreadfully incapable of independent decision making and learning, how on earth are they meant to parent the end results of the pregnancies that they’re being encouraged not to terminate? Or the children that they already have?
The illogical position that you are espousing by co-sponsoring and, I’m sure, ultimately voting for this repulsive piece of legislation speaks volumes about your inherent disdain and mistrust of women and bigotry against us. Given that, I’m not sure why you think that more than half of the electorate should support you, given that you’ve demonstrated time and again how little you think of us, our abilities and ultimately, our humanity.
Yeah, I was a little bit fired up, because this bill? Is ridiculous. (Yes, I also went to “women” rather than my normal gender neutral language. This dude is a Neanderthal, no way was he going to grasp the point of gender neutrality.)
Today, I received an oversized manilla envelope from Rep. Readshaw. Inside was a printout of HB 1077, a printout of some database’s information about me, indicating where I live, that I’m not the head of the household (why/how it knows this I do not know) and a few other things about me, like ethnicity, that no elected official should or needs to know. I’m going to have to get to the bottom of that.
Also included was a printout of my email, with the phrases “will fall on deaf ears” “destroying my constitutional right” and “my continued support for you” underlined in red ink. Apparently these phrases were exceptionally offensive? I don’t know.
And then there was the letter you see above. Handwritten by the representative himself, in all its chickenscratchy, grammatically questionable glory.
Let’s break it down together, shall we? First, note the black bar? That’s where the letter was addressed to me solely by my first name. (Government name, hence the censoring.) Not Ms. Lastname, not even Dear Firstname, just Firstname, as if he knows me and is writing to a friend. I don’t play that way. I gave him the respect of referring to him by title, he’ll do the same if he ever addresses me again.
He writes:
I know this message will fall on deaf ears but….. I do not choose to debate “intellect” vs. morals. As I believe morals should overwhelmingly be the favorite.
This is obviously a reference to my amazing assertion that “women do have independent intellect.” He disdains that, clearly. And thinks that if we choose abortion, we’re immoral. And I, by extension, am immoral for my stance. The inference is pretty clear to me, how about you? So this is a moral issue, which says to me that it’s not a legal issue. If it’s about morality, that’s not for the state to legislate to me, it’s for me to determine a course of action about, perhaps with the people I trust to discuss moral issues with, and whose guidance I can trust.
Let’s move on, though, shall we?
This blew my socks off. The arrogance and ignorance you’re about to read from a sitting elected official is absolutely breathtaking.
There should be no need to consider “what continuing an unwanted pregnancy would mean to their lives.” This can be controlled by contraception. Why create and kill? Simply, do not create….. Be responsible!
Where do I start? Apparently in whatever fantasy land this man inhabits, everyone has access to contraceptives. We know this is false. We know that this is demonstrably false. Apparently in that same fantasy land, contraception is 100% effective in every case. We know that this is demonstrably false. Apparently in that same fantasy land there is no rape, no coercion, no sexual abuse, no domestic violence, no birth control sabotage. There should be no need to consider. Nothing to think about. Just move along, you irresponsible killer sluts.
How dare he? I’m seething here. Seething.
Seven cosponsors are women of HB1077 and I do not believe any of the cosponsors have a “disdain and mistrust of women or bigotr