meme of eight

I've been tagged by Greta Christina to tell you eight wonderfully random tidbits about my tiny self!!! It's an honor to have been tagged by a real pornographer (just one step removed from Susie Bright herself!) since -- as you know -- we love to talk about porn here at "Letters from a Broad..." but really it's all just talk. ;^)

Here are the rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

(Actually, the rules seem very similar to the rules of most memes, except for the fact that the rules must be explicitly posted first. Maybe it's just stricter than the average meme...?)

Anyway, here are eight random things about me:

1. I'm under an absolutely insane deadline for a project at work, and it's really, really cutting into my blogging time. I keep saying I'm going to cut back on blogging, and lately it has become a sad reality. Because I hate it when my real job cuts into my hobby of following a hundred million blogs. Normally just because you don't see hits from me on your stats, it doesn't mean I'm not reading your blog -- think RSS -- but lately I haven't been doing even that. On the other hand, when my project at work is done, it's going to be amazingly cool.
2. My cousin is going to be visiting me in a couple of days. (Not Aerin, a different cousin. In fact we have a lot of cousins.) I'm psyched to have the opportunity to get to know my cousin better. I'm not sure I've ever met this cousin except during one family reunion fifteen years ago when she was a baby. But her family is cool.
3. I'm madly cleaning my house this weekend so that my cousin won't think that we live like cave-people. ("But we do live like cave-people!" protested my husband when I told him that.) I'm hoping to get the house up to the level that normal people's houses look like at their worst. From there I can apologize for the mess. I wish I were exaggerating, but anyone who knows me knows that tragically I am not exaggerating at all. Not even a little bit.
4. Okay, maybe a little bit. But not very much.
5. The charm on my keychain is a 1 gig USB memory stick. I'm not really a gadget person, but this thing is really convenient -- I use it all the time!
6. When I was in grad school, I used to keep a copy of Susie Sexpert's Lesbian Sex World in my office on the shelf with my math books. I'm not a lesbian or anything, but it was a great conversation starter.
7. I used to go by "Carrie" until I was 21 years old. Now it's weird for me to think of myself as Carrie. I still like the name, but it make me think of "me as a kid" -- someone who isn't quite the same as "me, now." On the other hand, I'm perfectly happy to answer to chanson.
8. I've only see two movies on the big screen (in the theater) within the past 5+ years. Those movies are Cars and Shrek the Third. The next one will be Ratatouille.

OK, now for the tagging part. Unlike Greta -- who politely asked people's permission before tagging them -- I'm just going to pick eight random people off the top of my head right now. Let's shoot this one into Outer Blogness:

Floating in the Milk, From the Ashes, Lemon Blossom, Todd, Sister Mary Lisa, Equality, Aerin, and -- while we're nepoting, my BIL Mike.

More whale naughty bits!!!

Ever since I posted about the birds and the bees and the whales I've gotten a whole bunch of search queries by people looking for pictures of whale genitals.

Why? I have no idea.

Some bloggers get annoyed when their blogs attract search queries that look like they may be from weirdos. But I'm not like that. Whenever I get those weirdo queries, I like to see it as just more free data for my inner anthropologist. Plus only cool people read my blog, so I'm willing to give these people the benefit of the doubt!

If they're looking for such an image, I'm sure they have some legitimate scientific and/or whale fetish purpose for wanting to see whales getting it on.

So without further ado, here's the picture you're looking for:

a whale of a big zizi

(I've linked to the image instead of inlining it to protect those with more delicate sensibilities.)

See that big pointy white thing in the picture? Yes, that is what you think it is.

(I bet you thought I was going to link to some entirely different picture just to be funny. Nah, the real thing is funny enough.)

Poor whale!!! He probably had no idea that he was going to become a porn star!!!

Actually it's possible that this may be the largest penis ever filmed in a sex scene. According to the documentary the testicles alone weigh more than a full ton!!! Mere human porn stars -- eat your hearts out!!! ;-)

All about Lourdes!!!

A couple hundred years ago, a fourteen-year-old went to a secluded grotto to pray, and saw a divine personage appear. (This story seems weirdly familiar, doesn't it?) The divine personage was of course the Virgin Mary, and the fourteen-year-old was later canonized as Saint Bernadette.



Lourdes is one of the most popular religious pilgrimage sites in the world. According to Wikipedia, it has more hotels than any city in France besides Paris. The Catholic church has officially declared that the waters of Lourdes have the power to miraculously heal people, so Lourdes is the prime destination for every Catholic whose health requires a miracle.

Lourdes is a popular spot for healthy Catholics as well. I mentioned to a colleague that I was going to Lourdes, and he told me his story of visiting Lourdes when he was a kid, in Catechism. The healthy push the sick (in special wheelchairs of Lourdes) to the healing waters to bathe. An endless procession of the dreadfully ill marinate in the miraculous pool from morning until night. Then it's your turn to get in. "That you don't get sick from it -- that's the miracle!" he said.

I haven't participated in any of the religious aspects, but I've learned a lot about Lourdes by observation. One popular custom I've noticed is to buy candles and place them in one of these candle-boxes:


Those are just the little ones. If you need a heavy-duty prayer candle to help your miracle along, you can buy a 20 kilogram candle for only 150 euros!


If you look closely at the photos above, you can see the candle box says (in several languages) "This flame continues my prayer." So apparently you start praying, and lighting a candle holds the line open with God while you go off and do something else. I thought it was pretty hilarious when Mr. Deity called dinner blessings "spam", but the Catholics have gone one step farther -- they actually call up God and put Him on hold!!!

(The things God has to put up with -- it's a wonder Mormons aspire to take that job...)

I was a little taken aback when I saw there was a medical station (open 365 days a year) right on the plaza of the Basilica! But... what do you need doctors for when you have the miracle of Our Lady of Lourdes right there? Never mind, don't answer that...

The best thing about Lourdes however is the souvenirs!!! Downtown Lourdes is an endless collection of block after block of the kitschiest holy souvenirs you've ever laid eyes on!!! The Wikipedia article warns that some may be shocked by the crass commercialism, but shocking is really the wrong word here. I think the word they're looking for is "hilarious"!!! I don't care whether you're one of those grumpy atheists who's always lamenting the popularity of magical thinking or one of those prudish Christians who thinks that religious items should be respectful and dignified -- when you actually get here and see this stuff, you can't be shocked because you're too busy rolling around on the ground laughing!!!

Seriously, for this alone Lourdes is worth the trip.

Some of my Catholic friends have told me about playing games like competing over who can find the tackiest souvenir in all of Lourdes. I keep wanting to play that game (or the variant where you count how many different household items can be made in the shape of the Virgin Mary), but we almost never have any time for souvenir shopping since we go there to visit our aunt who is too old to walk all the way to town. I know I shouldn't be disappointed -- I should be thinking about aunty and not about my own selfish desire to take a million outrageously wacky photos to post to my blog. Still it would have been great fun if I'd had time to see if I could find myself a glow-in-the-dark rosary or a magic 8-ball Jesus or perhaps an authentic shroud of Turin replica lampshade.

As it was, all I got this time were a few photos I took through the window of the taxi on the way back to the train station:




The other thing I was curious to see was the wax museum. It boasts life-size wax statues of the entire Last Supper (DaVinci style) and of Pope John Paul II!!! I'm a little hesitant about that place though because it may cross that fine line between tacky and scary...

Oh well, maybe next year!