Category Archives: Blogging

These posts are blogging exercises that I’ve completed, or are about blogging in general. I hope you get some good ideas or inspiration from them!

Ladies I Love: E is for Éowyn, Badass Shieldmaiden in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Posted in Blogging, Books, Entertainment, Events and Courses, Feminism, Movies and TV, Role Models, Women by

I thought finding a Lady I Love for the letter E was going to be a tough one in the A to Z Challenge, but if you haven’t figured it out by now, I do have a bit of a geeky side to me which means literary resources abound.  And today that will manifest itself in the form of crushing on one of my favorite fictional characters, Éowyn from the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien.  I read the trilogy many years ago, and my all-time favorite scene by far is from Return of the King, when Éowyn is fighting the Witch King during the Battle of Pelennor Fields.  Although Éowyn was a trained shieldmaiden of Rohan, her uncle, King Theoden, ordered her to stay behind with the women and children to guide their people while the men went to their almost certain doom to fight against the tides of Sauron.  She said, “screw that” and disobeyed him, dressing and acting as a man to sneak her way into the battle.  In the book, she meets the Witch King (the head of the ghost kings with the Nazgul) on the battlefield just as he has injured Theoden.  The Witch King is all, “No living man may hinder me!” because there’s a prophecy that states that the Witch King could not be felled by the hands of a man.  But Éowyn takes off her helmet and reveals herself, saying:

But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.

And the dumb-ass Witch King attacks her, but surprise!  Éowyn ends up kicking his ass and killing him.  Well, Theoden still dies, but it is a fantastic scene.  The movie plays it down a little bit, but it’s still a highlight for me.  To get the full impact, you really should read the book, but here’s a clip for you to enjoy in the meantime!

Ladies I Love: D is for Drew Barrymore, because I’m a Drewbie!

Posted in Blogging, Entertainment, Events and Courses, Movies and TV, Role Models, Role Models, Roller Derby, Women by

Ten reasons why I love Drew Barrymore

Today’s A to Z Challenge post is brought to you by the letter D!  I know it’s kind of silly, but I’ve had a girl crush on Drew Barrymore for as long as I can remember.  She’s only a year younger than me, and I’ve always admired her because she seems like a real person – she’s definitely had her ups and downs, and even though she’s Hollywood Royalty, she doesn’t take herself too seriously.  She’s not afraid to be dorky or play real people in her movies, people who aren’t always beautiful and perfect.  I don’t know – maybe I’m projecting my admiration onto someone without really knowing who they are, but from what I see, I’m proud to be a Drewbie!  Here are only ten of the many reasons why I love Drew Barrymore:

  1. Drew is a great sport, and seems to be without the Hollywood snobbery that many movie stars are afflicted with.  Watch My Date with Drew, a documentary produced by a guy with a huge crush on her, who has one goal: a date with Drew Barrymore.
  2. Drew is the godmother of Frances Bean Cobain, the daughter of the late Kurt Cobain and his wife Courtney Love.
  3. Drew is the youngest person to have ever hosted “Saturday Night Live”; she was only 7 years old at the time!  She then went on to host SNL five more times.
  4. Drew (born Feb. 22, 1975) and I (born Feb. 25, 1974) are both Pisces, the best astrological sign to be.
  5. Drew doesn’t seem to care about being dorky, and even makes being dorky awesome.
  6. Battling world hunger has been an important cause for Drew in the last several years.  In 2008, Drew donated $1 million to fund the Word Food Programme’s school food projects in Kenya.
  7. Drew is undoubtedly beautiful, but in many ways, she doesn’t embody the typical Hollywood beauty standard of being impossibly thin with perfect features.  Yet she was crowned the No. 1 Most Beautiful in People Magazine’s annual “100 Most Beautiful People” list in April 2007.
  8. Drew’s struggles during her childhood were very public when it came to drinking, drugs, addiction, family instability, and recovery.  She survived a lot of turmoil and came out on top, writing a book (“Little Girl Lost“) about her challenges at a young age, then continuing on to have a very successful career in film and directing with her own production company, Flower Films.
  9. Drew is an animal lover!  She has been a strong supporter of the work of Southern California’s Wildlife Waystation.
  10. Perhaps the number one reason I love Drew Barrymore (even though this is listed as No. 10) is because she’s a fan of roller derby, as evidenced by the fact that she made her directorial debut with the movie “Whip It” and even did a lot of her own skating for the film!

Ladies I Love: C is for Ceratiidae…or “warty sea devils” to you and me

Posted in Animals, Blogging, Events and Courses, Non-cats by
https://www.etsy.com/listing/48878881/a-light-in-the-dark-angler-fish-art

So cute, right?

Ladies and gentlemen…for today’s A to Z Challenge “C”-related post, I give to you our first non-human, but very real, Ladies I Love: the female warty sea devil!  Oh, come on – I’m a fish biologist – you can’t tell me you weren’t expecting this, can you???  Well, since it’s my blog, and my Ladies I Love theme, I can do what I like.  And what I’d like is for YOU to learn something about the deep-sea anglerfishes of the family Ceratiidae, or the warty sea devils!  This is no ordinary family of fish, you understand.  Anglerfish on their own are very interesting; surely you’ve seen them before (you know, from your nightmares, or from this scene in Finding Nemo).  Their name comes from an appendage that extends from their head to out in front of them, with a bioluminescent bulb dangling from the end, acting very much like a lure (making the fish itself an angler).  Smaller fish are attracted to the light (“ooh – what can that be down here in the darkness?  I must investigate…”) and then CHOMP!  The anglerfish takes its prey (clever girl!).

Triplewart Sea Devil – um, maybe not so cute.

But to be more specific, sea devils, and warty sea devils in particular, are quite interesting for one primary reason and two words: sexual parasitism (ok, I can feel your eyes glazing over, but this gets better – I promise).  There’s a great amount of sexual dimorphism in anglerfish – that is, females and males physically vary quite a bit from each other .  The female is often quite large compared to the male, and they’re not very common, either.  You’d think that these two would never actually even find each other, hook up and create new cute(?!?) little baby warty sea devils, but here’s where it gets interesting.  The male has either very good eyes or a strong sense of smell that alerts him to the presence of a female.  As soon as he nears her, he grabs onto her with his mouth, at which point enzymes immediately fuse the male’s mouth to the female’s body.  Their circulatory systems soon merge, and the male basically lives a parasitic life, with its organs dissolving away until he becomes no more than a sack of gonads that is ready to provide sperm when the female wants to reproduce.  Crazy, huh?  What’s also unique is that these fish are genetic chimera (one organism having more than one genetically distinct set of cells, in this case, cells from both the male and female), and that the chimera is a required part of its life-cycle.

Want to learn more about the anglerfish?  Here’s a “somewhat educational but mostly entertaining” video about the anglerfish, NOT narrated by Morgan Freeman:

And finally, this cartoon lovingly drawn by The Oatmeal (click here for the full strip).  Oh, I love the Oatmeal.  And he definitely loves my anglerfish lady.  And you should too!

Ladies I Love: B is for Lynda Barry (who gave me permission to doodle during meetings at work)

Posted in Art, Blogging, Books, Entertainment, Events and Courses, Role Models, Women by
Lynda Barry and Marci

Me and Lynda at San Diego Comic-Con in 2008!

Up next in the A to Z Challenge is the letter B! And since my theme is Ladies I Love, I will tell you about one of my all-time favorite artists, Lynda Barry.  I read her first book, Girls and Boys (1981), before I was ten years old and it left an immediate impression on me.  I had never read comic strips quite like hers – funky people, honest stories, smart humor and a fearlessness and vulnerability that I had never seen anywhere else.  While my earlier exposure to Lynda Barry’s work came in the form of comics and drawings, Lynda has diversified her art and interests as her career progresses.  She wrote a couple of novels (Cruddy is one of my favorite works of hers), and more recently, a pair of drawing and writing books called “Picture This” and “What It Is“.  Her research asks “what is an image?” and examines the connection between drawing and writing with brain function and the resulting physiological responses of doing art.  She has done a number of interviews (a couple of good ones are here and here) describing this line of research.  Currently, Lynda teaches classes about drawing and writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; you can follow along with her lessons through her tumblr (which I am obsessed with).

Lynda Barry

Two panels of a comic by Lynda Barry. Child-like and often semi-autobiographical, Lynda tells stories from all of our youth experiences.

I love Lynda Barry.  She has been a creative influence on me since I was a young kid.  I tried to emulate her spirit in my own cartoons.  I met her at Comic-Con.  I’ve bought a couple of her paintings.  I WISH I could take one of her courses.  But because I am not a total stalker, I will, for now, have to settle for taking some of her advice about doodling to a practical level.  Doodling, according to Lynda, can increase concentration and rescue us from tedium.  This advice has resulted in, for you, a small collection of some of my favorite doodles that I’ve done during meetings at work.  You can click on the images to make them bigger, and for a short description of the meetings during which they were yaawwwwnnn…oops…I mean drawn.

There is a kind of monkeying around with our hands that changes our sense of time in a tiny way that can make a big difference. Like doodling in the margins during a very boring meeting. It can make time feel like less of a cheese grater and more like sandpaper. That’s a small but critical difference. People employ doodling all the time, even those who are certain they never draw will make a complicated pattern of marks with their thumbnail on a Styrofoam cup when someone very boring is speaking at length. Nearly everyone does this.  — Lynda Barry

Lynda Barry-inspired work doodles drawn by me:

Office-wide project prioritization meeting
Bull trout recovery unit meeting
Bull trout tech team meeting
Office funding meeting
Budget reduction meeting
Deer Island project meeting
Recovery Assessment Program meeting
NCTC class name placard
NatureServe meeting
Bull trout recovery planning meeting

Related Posts:

Ladies I Love: A is for Anya Marina

Posted in Blogging, Entertainment, Events and Courses, Music and Dance by

It’s the start of the A to Z Challenge – hurray!!!  And that means that today, April 1, starts off with the letter A.  My theme is Ladies I Love, which will feature individuals, or groups of women, a type of woman, non-human women, fictional women, and who knows what else (but still women)!  Today’s featured Lady I Love is Anya Marina, a Portland-based singer-songwriter that I actually learned about when I was living in San Diego.  She has such a sweet, smooth voice and her music is simple, which I appreciate in a world full of noise.  My absolute favorite album of hers is called “Slow and Steady Seduction: Phase II”.  It is my favorite because it reminds me so much of the time that me and my husband were dating back in 2010.  In fact, Christopher played “Vertigo” from that album on his phone while he was waiting for me to get done prettying myself up in the bathroom so that he could propose to me!  I took so long that I finally noticed that the song had played like three times in a row, so I came out to see what was going on, and there he was with the ring, with “Vertigo” still playing in the background.  Here’s the song for you to listen to and enjoy!

Every time I hear Anya Marina’s “Vertigo”, I think of my Christopher and that perfect day.  And just fyi, if you’ve made it this far, I’m proud of you.  This is my mushiest, sappiest post in April, so thanks for reading and make sure to come back again!  I’m excited about the other ladies that I’m featuring this month!

And my theme for the 2014 A to Z Challenge is…(drum roll, please)…

Posted in Blogging, Events and Courses, Women by

Ladies I Love!

2014 A to Z Challenge Theme Reveal

I am a great admirer of many ladies, and I hope that after the month of April when the A to Z Challenge ends, you will be too (if you aren’t already).  Actually, the phrase “Ladies I Love” is a bit misleading, because really, I’m talking about females in general; for example, I am female, but I don’t consider myself to be a lady*.  I don’t spend my days swooning about in taffeta frocks and meandering about the garden with a parasol and pair of gloves, no, and there are few females that I know who do.  However, I didn’t quite connect with the phrases “Females I Favor” and “Women who are Wonderful” and “XX Chromosomes that XXCite me”.  So, I went with “Ladies I Love”.  Short, sweet, simple.  But deceptive!  For, as you shall see during the month of April, these “Ladies” may (or may not?) include the following sorts:

  • Actual human females who could be artists, scientists, writers, innovators, or role models
  • Non-human females who are interesting or unique in one way or another
  • Non-existent females who have contributed to the feminine mystique through time, history and space

And your mind just exploded!  Keep visiting Fuzzy Undertones to find out from which of these three categories my daily Lady I Love comes from.  And if you have a Lady You Love and you want me to know (or maybe even feature), feel free to drop me a comment!

Fritz Zuber-Buhler: A Reclining Beauty with Her Cat

Fritz Zuber-Buhler: A Reclining Beauty with Her Cat

* Lounging around loosely clothed in bed with at least one cat?  Maybe I am a lady.  Shit.

Zero to Hero: Done and Done!

word.Day 30 of Zero to Hero is complete!  A lot of the program was “behind the scenes”; i.e., not actual blog posts, which I enjoyed.  It made me think a lot about how my blog and brand is presented, and helped me solidify what I want my blog to be.  I’ve got some great ideas in the works, which I’m very excited about.  But now on to the next blogging adventure:  April’s A to Z Challenge!  I’ll be blogging every day in April (except for Sundays), with each day corresponding to a letter of the alphabet.  I even have a theme, which shall be revealed on March 21.  Stay tuned!

Why do YOU blog? Please tell me!

Posted in Blogging, Writing by

Why Blog?

I’ve been doing a bit of thought about a post I’d like to write soon, and I’d very much like your insight.  Why do we blog?  There are many reasons why I have a blog, but I’m trying to figure out just why so many of us put ourselves out there for the world to see.  So I’m interested in what you, fellow bloggers, are getting out of the whole blogging experience!  Please take part in my easy-peasy poll and/or leave a comment to tell me:  why do you blog, and what is your ultimate goal? Participants will be kindly thanked by me mentally sending you a box full of the cutest hypo-allergenic kittens in the world (assorted colors and sizes)!

Round Two: Another Post about Bras – Let’s Get Ready to Grumble!

Posted in Blogging, Complainments, Events and Courses, Healthy Perspectives, Humor, Me Me Me!, Women by

Vintage Bras

Wow – we ladies certainly love our boobs, and have strong, loud and opinionated voices when it comes to protecting our options.  Whether it’s breast-feeding in public or the injustices brought about by ill-fitting and unflattering breast support, it seems that, when it comes to boobs, we’re ready to rumble.  Or grumble, more like.  In fact, the post I wrote about a month ago called “Bra Shopping:  Not as Titillating as I Had Hoped” was my most commented-upon post ever, since starting this blog back in 2005.  I received a lot of comments through Facebook, and was even offered custom assistance from a personal shopper who works in the lingerie department at Nordstrom’s.  Thank you so much for reading my rant and telling me how you feel regarding your own bra-shopping experiences!

Looks like I'm not the only one confused by bras.

Looks like I’m not the only one confused.

When it comes down to it, bras are pretty confusing.  Not the concept, of course – just give us something comfortable and pretty that can help stabilize our ta-tas.  Where this becomes troublesome is in the details.  For example:  Why the awkwardness – why is the clasp in the back?  Why so few sizes that are either pretty or sexy; do the physics of bra construction prevent the use of color, sparkles or texture?  And why the discomfort?  Why, oh for the love of god, WHY is METAL WIRE with STABBY ENDS a component of ANYTHING that comes near our boobs?  Where did we go wrong???

In addition to the problems I outlined in my previous post, a number of you wrote about issues that seem to be common when we go to the lingerie department.  Here are a few of your comments:

  • Linda wrote: “besides color and poor construction, why does almost every bra out there in larger sizes have padding in the cup???”  I know, right?  It seems like most “every day” bras now come standard with padding or are push-ups.  That’s not my idea of every-day comfort.
  • Amy echoed the above sentiment and added “I need a strap that doesn’t roll but hopefully doesn’t look like something out of a 1940s Sears catalog”, and I agree!
  • And Jessica also made a very good point about cost: “I take great issue with the fact that all the cute, frilly bras in the smaller sizes are always so much cheaper. I realize that it takes sturdier construction to hold up a larger chest, but come on. When they are three or four times the cost of all the other bras out there and still plain black, neutral or white that is just absurd. It is not that much extra fabric.”
  • But it’s not only the more curvy girls among us who have complaints; I heard quite a bit from the smaller ladies as well.  Susan wrote, “Try shopping for 36A, also known as the 36nipple. I do not want an underwire, I want comfort…is that too much to ask?”  Yes, yes it is, Susan.  Just. Too. Much.
  • And it’s not even just the women, the men have something to say too.  Ken passionately stated, “This injustice will not stand! I want everyone to have fun underthingies that fit. Seriously, why aren’t the manufacturers responding to the market that clearly needs a product? Do it for the boobies!”  Thank you, Ken, for your (ahem) support!

The fact is, we women like to think that every single one of us has broken the mold in some respect.  We like being individuals, unique, interesting, different from everyone else.  And when someone tells us that we have to force our boobs into something that is, well, molded to a few specific shapes and sizes, that rankles us to the core.  Truly, when I look back upon the history of the bra, I can’t say I’m excited for the future.  If they haven’t listened to us by now, when will they?

Gas Mask Bra

Well, I guess we’ve got priorities. At least it’s pretty!

New Roller Derby Rules Roundup: WTF???

Posted in Blogging, Events and Courses, How to Play Derby, Roller Derby by

Oh, duuuuude!  Just when I thought everything was getting squared away – I’m checking off my Minimum Skill Requirements (I leveled up from red to yellow!), got 24 laps in 5 minutes (on my way to 27 in 5!), and missed only ONE answer on my WFTDA written test (and that’s up for debate, really) – they had to do it.  Starting April 1, the new WFTDA rules go into effect.  Wait?!?  What new rules???  Well, unlike me, YOU’RE not going to worry about it too much, because I’ve been doing some homework for you.  I’ve scoured the Interwebs and found some resources for you to help answer all the necessary questions you’re sure to be asking yourselves right now  (e.g., 30-second penalties?  Flopping?  Single point of transfer for star passes?). So are you ready to put your learning panties on over your helmet?  Good!  Head on over to these sites to get all the details about the new rules:

But if you want to know what people are saying about the rules changes – whether they like them or not and how they are changing the game, check out these blogs:

Ahhhhh.  Now that my panic attack about the new rules is over, I hope that we can just all calm down a bit.  It’s not really that big a deal, right?  Cool.  I’m going to grab a white Russian and watch The Big Lebowski.  Again.  And while I’m at it, why don’t YOU leave me a comment and let me know what you think of the new rules?  Thanks!