The Masked Villain Known as Icing Sugar

I've been reading The Cure for Everything! by Timothy Caulfield. The author is attempting to untangle "the twisted messages about health, fitness and happiness." so far it has been extremely enlightening. It has also been very depressing by confirming that there are no short cuts when it come to losing weight, getting fit and staying that way. It is going to be one long hard slog that never ends.

One of the things that Caulfield "reveals" is that exercise won't make you loose weight (though, ironically, it will help you maintain your weight). The one and only way to get skinny and toned is to eat less. For most of us that means a lot less.

So last night when I went to visit a couple of friends what I had read was very much on my mind. I was served a pre-mixed Skinny Girl cocktail that one of my hosts gleefully declared was only 100 calories. "But, 100 calories for how much?" I asked. Out came the bottle and some guestimations and estimations based on how big is a can of pop and how much fits into a martini glass and the ultimate conclusion was that we were drinking more than 100 calories worth of Skinny Girl White Cranberry Cosmos.

The conversation turned to what's in what we eat and how we all eat more than nature ever intended, and how some "healthy" foods are "SO bad for us". That's when I was informed that peanut butter contains... ICING SUGAR! Can you believe it? ICING sugar. They already knew that Kraft peanut butter probably wasn't the best thing to eat but ICING sugar was just a step too far. We should be eating natural peanut butter. Not all that nasty ICING sugar.

At the time I let this slide, but I have to say this now: icing sugar is just sugar. It is no better or worse than what you put in your coffee, it's the same sugar ground to a powder. And while natural peanut butter is better probably healthier than that jar of Skippy, it is by no means a health food. Calorically and fat content wise they're virtually identical. One little adjective turned bad guy sugar into the super villain ICING SUGAR.

I can't blame them for not understanding what icing sugar is: most people of my generation have never been around, let alone involved with food preparation. How would they know the difference between butter and frosting is sugar, or that the difference between margarine and mayonaise is basically an egg.

Wonder Woman Fashion Fail

In a bold attempt to alienate queer audiences, the producers of the new Wonder Woman TV series have given the tit-ular character a hideous make-over.

NBC has promised a less campy version of the female heroine, recasting her as "a vigilante crime fighter in L.A. but also a successful corporate executive and a modern woman trying to balance all the elements of her extraordinary life." So they've dressed her as a hooker.

File this under, what were they thinking.

As a gay man I'm not usually interested in the state of a woman's crotch but, what's up with her crotch? It just looks so... wrong. Like her pants don't fit. Granted it must have been super difficult to stitch together all those metallic blue balloons.

The worst fashion crime here, of course, is the decision to make her cuffs silver. Gold tiara, gold bracelts. It's a rule. Best not to get me started on those boots.

Not to be unkind to Adrianne Palicki, but they producers aren't doing her any favours with this publicity shot. Linda Carter had a strong look. Ms Palicki, not so much. The only asset the NBC seems interested in is her tits. They've hidden her face behind clown make-up and a black rats-nest of teased hair. Give the poor girl a sassy ponytail and you might save this outfit.

Either you embrace the classic (if campy) tits-and-ass crime fighter look or you try something truly new. Whatever that is, it isn't this.

The Ride on Society6

The Ride (2009) by Matt Taylor

Earlier this week, Threadless directed me to Society6 where I discovered this gem by illustrator Matt Taylor. On Threadless contributers submit designs to be used on t-shirts. At Society6 you can purchase contributing artists designs as prints or stretched canvases or iPhone cases or computer decals etc. I've become obsessed. I have so many prints and photographs and orignal artwork in my house awaiting the framers but now I want to buy more. Lots more. And I don't even have wall space left...

School Boys

The man who sold me this photo (for $10) told me that there was something special about it but couldn't remember what it was. It was important he insisted, but apparently forgettable. I paid that princely sum because the boy in the second row, fifth from the left, really stood out to me. Like on Sesame Street; "One of the things just doesn't belong here, one of these things just isn't the same."

Love Field, Dallas, TX

"Scene at Love Field, Dallas showing passenger bus owned and operated by Southern Air Transport unloading passengers to be carried on the Brownsville plane of TAT Flying Service. At Brownsville connections are made with the Mexican lines."

September 1933

Lately I've become obsessed with old photographs, particularly group shots. The sense of lost history attached to them is intriguing. These people were obviously important to someone but who that was or why, and who the subjects are, is forgotten. It might be because I'm likely the end of my line, and all my photos are probably doomed to either a scrap heap or a rummage sale too. Or, in this age of digital photography, the delete button.

I found this photograph at the St. Lawrence Market Antique Fair. It is dated Sept 1933 on the back. I imagine this is a Toronto school, though there is no real way of knowing. The man who sold it to me only knew that he bought it from woman North of the city who's mother, or possibly grandmother, was in the photo. I wonder what compelled this woman to part with the picture. It couldn't be the money-I only paid $5 for it.

Gold Winning Hotties

I want to congratulate Australia's 4 X 100 m swim team, who recently won gold at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. All your hard work has certainly paid off.