You know that roller derby has taken over your life when..

You know that roller derby has taken over your life when...     you dream that you are playing in a bout, however there is the added challenge of godzilla type dragon creatures in the center of the track.  One red spitting a death ray of fire and the other blue blowing blizzard winds of ice.

Update

Things have been crazy lately.  Working ridiculous hours, going to Derby practice, and the band is back in the swing of things.  In other words free time does not exist in my life at the moment.  I am not complaining though.  I am really excited about everything I am doing.

Jet Blk Joy is back and kicking with a new member Sara who plays keyboard.  We had our first practice with her last saturday.  It went really well.  Her addition to the sound took some of our old songs in completely new directions and added a rich body to a couple of new songs that em and I have been working on.

Derby is awesome!  I love playing more and more every practice.  I just passed the third assessment or red level and the rules test.  This means I can start to scrimmage.  I can’t wait to learn the game from on the track.  The next and final level I need to pass is the black assessment and then I will be bout ready and can be drafted to a team.

i guess that is all for now.

Kitundu PhonoKora Demonstration

KQED Spark - Walter Kitundu

Juana Molina

Dragonfly

WTF! 2012 memorial titanic cruise?

According to Titanicmemorialcruise.co.uk this “voyage of a lifetime will sail from Southampton on 8th April 2012 the twelve night cruise on board the MS Balmoral and will follow the RMS. Titanic's original itinerary, passing by Cherbourg on the French coast before calling into the Irish port of Cobh.  From here the ship will sail across the Atlantic, arriving at the Titanic site on April 14th/15th exactly 100 years on from this tragic voyage, where a memorial service will be held to pay tribute to the brave passengers and crew who perished on that fateful night. The voyage will then continue to Halifax, Nova Scotia, the final resting place of many who were on board, before sailing on to New York, the Titanic's ultimate planned destination.” I have heard that the cruise plans to play the same sorts of music, have the same meals, and the same on board activities.  The only thing that they are not recreating is the ship herself.  What is even more bizarre is the fact that cabins are already selling out.  I really don’t see the appeal of being on a recreation of one of the worlds most famous tragedies especially when the date is set for the, already full of tragic predictions, year 2012.  Spooky! 

Damnresistance

Be sure to check out Damnresistance for more blog post from me.  I will be posting personal information and stories here on thinger, but I will be posting interesting or inspiring factoids from the world on Damnresistance.  Damnresistance also has posts from Emily Kate Boyd and in the future perhaps other musicians and artists. Hope you enjoy both blogs.  Would love to hear some feed back on both:)

Personal update

Tired does not begin to describe the way I feel at the moment.  Work yesterday felt more like prison camp.  It was raining all day.  I don’t own a waterproof anything.  So I was soaked to the bone by mid morning.  Planting in wet clay is nearly impossible.  Not only does it stick to your shovel, it also sticks to everything else.  My cloths were caked in mud.  In the process of planting I also managed to get dirt under my clothing.  Dirt mixed with wet clothing mixed with lots of movement makes for a very uncomfortable day.  Not to mention exhausting.  Moving rocks and plants while your feet are sticking or sliding in the mud is not any fun at all.  I didn’t get home in till around seven and then it was off to Derby practice.  I was hoping that it would turn an awful day into a good one, but instead I just felt like a complete failure the entire time.  I had absolutely no confidence.  I am glad I went, but I am really unsure if I am going to make the assessment on saturday.  My plow stops are awful and my pivots are more like falls...

HAPPY Act...It would make me happy, but how about you? Woof!

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan has introduced a bill that would give taxpayers a $3,500 a year deduction for pet care expenses.  The HAPPY or Humanity and Pets Partnered Through the Years Act would relieve some of the financial stress associated with pet care.  Especially in times like these when unemployment is so high, Rep. McCotter believes that this Act could help prevent people giving up or abandoning their pets during hard times.  He also hopes that getting more money back in the pockets of consumers will help to stimulate the economy.

She blinded me with science! Oh...no wait it was really just her brassiere.

If you haven’t heard of the Ig Nobel prize according to Wikipedia “The Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October for ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think.”  This year the winners include some great ones such as a study showing that cows with names give more milk than cows that are nameless or the study that determined whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle, but by far my favorite of the ten was the award given for public health to “Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA, for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.”  According to the groups patent this brassiere is “A garment device convertible to one or more facemasks wherein the garment device has a plurality of detachable cup sections. Each of the cup sections has a filter device, an inner portion positionable adjacent to the inner area of the user's chest, and an outer portion positionable adjacent to the outer area of the user's chest. The garment device has at least one securing device detachably coupling the inner portions of the cup sections to one another, and the garment device has at least one other securing device attached to the outer portion of at least one of the cup sections. This other securing device is operable to: (a) detachably couple the outer portions of the cup regions to one another; and (b) for each one of the cup sections, attach the outer portion of said cup region to the inner portion of said cup region after said cup region is detached from the other cup region, thereby converting the garment device to a plurality of facemasks.”  Hilarious and wonderful.  Believe me if I were in the midst of a biological/ chemical warfare attack and the woman standing near me ripped off her bra and handed me one half I would be more than grateful for all the hard work and research that this years winners did to create such a whimsical device.

whimusicination Repost from Damnresistance

What I have always had pulling at the end of my synapses twisting dreams that egg on my aching heart…only to find that my fingers don’t know the way yet…

Walter Kitundu

Kitundu's website

Repost of Parasitic Worms from Damnresistance

I was shoulder deep in a garden yesterday afternoon pulling weeds and listening to one of my favorite podcasts WNYC RadioLab when the story shifted from mearly interesting into something akin to having the universe wisper in my ear the answer to a question I had been asking for twenty five years. It was a strange full body sensation of awe, excitement, disbelief and disgust.  
     The podcast topic was Parasites.  Actually here is the WNYC RadioLab description "PARASITES What's gotten into you? In this hour we explore nature's moochers - the good, the bad, and the hideous. We have stories of lethargic farmers, zombie cockroaches, and even mind-controlled humans (kinda, maybe). Could parasites be the shadowy hands that pull the strings of life?"  Sounds interesting right?  Oh and it is!  
     The story that I am referencing as the word of god, only one of many on this episode, has to do with a man who spent his whole life living with severe allergies and asthma.  Then one day he was on vacation and someone mentioned a BBC program on studies being conducted showing a correlation between hook worm infection and the absences of autoimmune diseases.  After a little bit of personal research and an attempt to buy hook worm.  He decided that in order to get hook worm he would need to go to Africa.  He booked his ticket, flew to Africa and walked bare foot in village latrenes in the hopes of contracting hook worm.  After his stay in Africa he flew back to his home in LA.  It was nearing allergy season when he first realized that something was different.  He could breathe!  The hook worm infection had cured his asthma and allergies.  It works somehow because Hookworms co-evolved with the human immune system.  They send out signals to lull our immune systems reaction or over reaction in the case of autoimmune diseases.  In our modern society we have eliminated hook worm infection through good hygiene, however this elimination may be the reason for a rise in autoimmune diseases such as asthma, allergies, and type one diabetes.
     After listening to this, I popped up out of the garden and declared to my co-workers "I need to get a hook worm infection."   By their puzzled looks I realized that this was a very strange statement.  So I quickly explained myself.  Anyone who knows me knows that I have suffered from asthma and allergies airborne and food (death allergy as my friend calls it) my entire life.  So you can see now why this strange and slightly disgusting cure could sound like the word of god when it fell apon my ears.  Now I know that this has not been fully trialed or approved by any medical means, so don't worry I am not going to go rushing out to get me some hook worm.  However what ever you want to call it god, evolution, magic...it is still pretty damn fascinating to realize that a worm living and breading in our gut could be the conductor holding the orchestra of our immune system at a steady and metered pace.  The chaos moved inward as our modern society focused on sterile environments and medical science.

Sorry for the nine month pause

Well It has been almost a year since the last time I posted and for some reason I feel like starting this things up again. I hope that there are a few of you out there that are still reading.

A short up date on the past nine months.

First of all I moved. I am renting a little two bedroom house in Decatur. It has a large fenced in yard in the back and a large front yard as well. I started a garden this past summer in the front yard. I will post some pictures as soon as I get a new camera.

I rescued a mutt that had been abandoned in the house next to were I work. He is some sort of a golden retriever mix. Very light in color almost white. I am guessing that he is a little older than a year...but not exactly sure. Still has a lot of puppy energy. I named him blondie.

Went to montana for my grandmothers memorial service/ family reunion. I will write more about this at some point.

Tried out for Roller Derby and made it past the first assessment. I am now Fresh Meat. I am not a roller girl yet, but I am training with about twenty other women to become one. We have to pass three more assessments before we are bout ready. Then in December there will be a draft and I could be picked for one of the Atlanta teams.

Emily and I started playing some music together again. We are working on some new stuff and hopefully will have the band up in running again soon. We have started a group blog called Damnresistance.

Ok well I think that is a decent up date. I will post some pictures soon. I am also going to try to be more regular about my posts. I am hoping to post at the least once a week.