My First Handle

First it was Bloodwolf, and variations thereof. This was pre-modem days and reserved solely for playing Wolfenstein 3D.

I still use my first email address, which I created shortly after this above picture was taken--Shilindra. Andrew gave me the handle to be my online game persona, back in the days when playing Diablo on B.net meant 3000 other players on a good night. I alternated between this and Wicked Plum, a quote taken from a scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And the fake name that I gave boys in the b.net chatrooms? Wynne Cameron.

(B.net chatrooms, by the way, were the first time I learned the meaning of the phrase "g-spot." Ah, those were the days.)

Stigmata

I had never seen a nun in Toronto before, until Thursday, when I saw a nun at Shopper's Drug Mart buying tampons and pads.

It's true. Even nuns bleed.

Full of Fire

I think the first time I ever confessed my demise was through the course of correspondance with a potential boyfriend to-be. We wrote emails daily, and played the question game. In each email, we would be responsible for asking a question, and providing a response to not only their question, but to our questions that we had posed in the previous email. Games like that get you into trouble.


"I've always believed that I'm going to die at the age of 26. I don't know why, but I've always thought it will have something to do with fire. Maybe it's a depressing way to live, but at least it's helped me live life to the fullest," I wrote. His reponse to me was unsettling: apparently, according to him, there are a whole league of people out there with this same mentality.

I suppose the thought started when I watched a 2012 documentary when I was about 9 or 10. The fear of technology subsuming our planet consumed me and I used to lay awake at night, envisioning waffle irons attacking my face and paper shredders grabbing me by the hair. I guess I was poor at math, because I'll be 26 in 2010, but I always pegged 2012 as the date. The fire, though? I don't know.

I suppose it was always there with me, from the first time I watched a building burn down. It was Hooterville, or that's what they called it, and I was about three. My Dad took us to watch, and it was starting to rain lightly while the building burnt to the ground. "Imagine all those little girls without dolls or toys," my mom told me when we got home.

I kept a rock by my bed to throw at the window. It was how I would escape when our own home burnt down. Before worrying about 2012, and when I wasn't worrying about bears entering our home and eating us, I was terrified of fire. It was one of the first fears.

Today I went to see a Traditional Chinese Medicine Practioner. Modern medicine is clearly failing me in regards to my eyes, and it seems to one of the only routes left. The doctor was decidedly not Chinese. He consulted with me for an hour, and was the first physician I've ever seen who seemed to truly understand eczema (beyond just brushing it off as a rash in need of some steroid cream).

At the end of our consult he asked, "One last thing. Stick out your tongue." After making some last notes, he gave me his diagnosis, "In traditional Chinese medicine, we look at the tongue. And your tongue is very pink. The problem is that you have heat from within," he told me. "Or, as the Chinese would say, you're full of fire."

Shameless Plug takes on a whole new meaning. . .

That was the best blog title I've written in a long time. And you're about to find out why.

While my blogging counterparts are receiving things like Microsoft's secret weapon to combat the Ipod (and by weapon, I mean a Nerf-style weapon--cool-looking, colourful, but in the end, pretty ineffectual for serious damage) my own blogging prestige is finally resulting in some swag.


But instead of pricey electronics, my package was a little, er, more pratical.


That's right. Tampons.

And for a company that's trying to stress their environmentally-friendly nature in their latest campaign, I was kind of confused by the plastic packaging.


The truth is, I have no shame in writing about the product or posting pictures of the product on my blog because the best part about these viral marketing campaigns is that you're supposed to be candid about it. And while I applaud the marketing companies for targeting the blogosphere as a potential way to make a buck, I think this may also be a major flaw in their brilliant plan--it's an open forum for criticism. (Thoughts? Marketing fascinates me. In another life, I am pretty sure I was some seedy advertising guru.)


With that being said, maybe I'd have more to say if a company had sent me say. . .a food product. Because you know what I love? Food. It's a lot easier to get excited about food than it is to get excited about menstrual products.

My favourite part of the whole package is the water bottle. I've been dying for a stainless steel waterbottle, and I'm just hoping that the phrase "mighty.small" doesn't catch on as an phrase identiable as being related to menses. Also awesome? The cute hot water bottle and the fact that o.b. is a product I actually use.*

Anyway, any ladies out there want some tampons? Let me know, because if you don't, I'm just going to put them on my kitchen table like popouri. That, or send them with volunteers from my organization to Africa. (No joke.)

In other fascinating news, Canada Day resulted in a burnt back.

____________________________________________________________

*There's no point in lying. The token endorsement sentence is fact--I actually do use this product--but I only included it because I don't want to get blacklisted from the free stuff bandwagon.