Today’s writing exercise: Rolphing

If only I would have discovered Rolphing before I finished my book. I’m sure it would have taken my creativity to whole other level. Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda of Chad Vader fame spoke at the conference this past weekend and introduced a room full of middle-aged women to rolphing. Some of the women may have thought it was funny. I thought it was hilarious.

Victoria’s Secret: a non-pervs quest to buy his girlfriend underwear

I wrote this piece last year and read it for Annie before I gave her the gift I bought. It’s about the lengths we’ll go to buy a gift for loved ones. It’s about not being a perv. It’s about shopping for the most comfortable and non-sexy bra and panties in the World at Victoria’s Secret.

Merry Christmas,

Kelsey

VICTORIA’S SECRET
by Kelsey Timmerman

For most of my life I’ve pretended that Victoria didn’t exist and that her secret meant nothing to me.

Countless times I passed her store, without so much as a look. Even if I wasn’t shopping with my mom or my girlfriend Annie, I vowed not to scan her windows. Why? Because, I wasn’t a perve.

It’s surprising how developed ones peripheral vision can become. Through mine I saw a pink palace of plush carpet. Everything seemed as soft as a cloud – the lace, the fabric, the cleavage. Inside, leggy, buxom young ladies spoke with accents as they advised hot young co-eds on the wonders of the Wonder Bra. And, oh, the changing rooms. What delicate little rooms of privacy they must be.

With a little imagination my peripheral vision was at least 20/20. Damn near X-ray.

It’s the Wednesday afternoon before Christmas. It happens fast, like a decision to itch your elbow. One moment I’m feigning interest in the candle store across the hall while and now I’m walking towards her. Face to face with Victoria.

I’m going in.

Table after table of underwear. Walls lined with bras. If I had died at the age of 13, this is where I would have gone. And, in turn, if I would have gone here at the age of 13, I would have died. My chest is tight and rises and falls with a shudder, each breath shorter than the last. I need help. I need to get in and get out as quickly as possible.

I find her folding underwear. She’s wearing an earpiece to get updates on urgent stock issues regarding nighties. She has dark hair, dark eyes, and an air of holiday retail disgust. She’s a little heavy, and not very leggy or buxom. I picture her in her underwear. I picture the guy who just walked in with the Yankees cap turned backwards in his underwear. In an underwater store it’s hard not to picture everybody in their underwear.

“I need help,” I say.

“What can I do for you?” She stops folding.

“I want to buy my girlfriend the most comfortable underwear you have,” I say. To be honest, I feel a little stupid saying underwear in public to a complete stranger. I ponder using undergarment or skivvies or anything that sounds more prudish.

“Here are some of our more comfortable bras.” She says as she motions to the wall of bras. Cupped and hanging perfectly as if being modeled by some invisible babes.

I nod.

“Does she wear these?” She points. Then she motions to her own chest. “They cup higher. Or these that are a little lower?”

“Whatever is the most comfortable.” I emphasize comfort too inform her that I’m not like those other guys that come in looking for a little nylon and spandex to sculpt their ladies and leave their secret treasures secret, but just barely so. The perverts.

“What size is she?”

I stare at her searching. I’ve snuck a peak or two at Annie’s bras lying on the bathroom floor. Most are faded and worn to the point where the tags are unreadable. But just yesterday I saw one of her newer ones, no less than five years old. Every guy wants to know his ladies digits.

“What color?”

“White.” White is not sexy. It’s everyday. Red or black would be selfish – like I was dressing her up for me. This isn’t about me. She buys her underwear in packs of 5 at Wal-Mart. I want to treat her to something special that she wouldn’t buy for herself.

“How much is it?” I say.

“$45.”

I act like I’m not doing any conversions. That $45 dollars does not equal hours’ worth of work. That $45 couldn’t buy me enough underwear to last three years or enough pizza to last a week. $45 Dollars!

“Okay.” I say.

She hands me the bra.

I’m holding a bra. I’ve never held a bra in the privacy of my own home and now here I am at the mall holding one.

“How about panties to match?”

“Sure.” Panties! Panties! Aren’t panties underwear. I wish she would call them underwear.

“What kind does she wear?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess something like those.” I point with the hand not holding the bra. The bra holding hand isn’t going anywhere. It is frozen.

“Well unless your girlfriend is an 85-year-old grandma she doesn’t wear those,” she says.

“Here, she probably wears something like this – the string bikini bottoms.”

Pardon me for not knowing my undergarments, but for a moment I think that string bikini equals thong. I am on the verge of hanging myself with the bra. And then she holds up non-thong underwear. Thank God.

“Yeah, something like that would work,” I say, hoping she will hand them to me so I can run for the counter.

She doesn’t. “Now, seamed or seamless?”

“I guess seamless. They sound more comfortable. Besides,” I point to the table of seamed bottoms, “those look like the ones she gets in Wal-Mart by the bundle. Really, is there any difference…?” I continue on down this path completely and unintentionally devaluing this woman’s position as an undergarment salesperson before I finally realize that I should just shut it.

“This table is all seamless,” she says.

She starts to look through the neatly folded piles of panties, when she is interrupted, “Excuse me. I’m about a size 6. What would that be?” The woman is in her 40’s and appears to be calm as can be, as if she spent everyday searching out the perfect pair of underwear while 27-year-old me looks on.

I picture her in her underwear. I can’t help myself. I’m completely not attracted to this lady. Actually, she’s pissing me off. Who does she think she is trying to steal my sales rep (whatever her name is – I won’t read the name tag for fear that she thinks I’m trying to check out her chest)?

They continue on to talk about sizes and cuts.

I don’t hear them. I’ve got bigger problems. The realization has set in: I have to touch panties. The search for a medium begins. Ever so gently I pick through the stack.

Minutes or days go by, when the sales rep says, “You may want to consider these boy cut panties.”

Miss Size Six says, “I always wanted to try a pair of those.”

“Are they comfortable?” I ask.

“Yep, just like the bikinis. You can barely tell they are there. The main difference is that a little bit of butt cheek hangs out the bottom.”

She motions with her hand to where they hit her butt cheek. I picture her in boy cut panties. I picture Miss Size Six in boy cut panties. Hell, I picture me in boy cut panties.

“The boys,” she nods at me, “really like that.”

“Well which ones are more comfortable?” I ask.

“They’re the same. It all depends if you want to buy them for you or her.”

The torture! Deep down I hope that the pink of my surroundings disguises the flush in my face.

“I’ll just go with those.” I point to the bikinis.

“What color?”

I hem-haw around as if it doesn’t really matter to me. Color doesn’t really matter to us guys who just want to treat their ladies to overpriced seamless undergarments. Why would we care? Only pervs care.

“Here’s a white pair to match the top.”

Now I’m holding panties and a bra. I leave the two women talking about butt-check-hanging-outage and how much is sexy and how much is just too much.

If I wanted, I could crush up both garments and shove them into my pocket. They would take up next to no room, yet the check out girl feels the need to put them in a stiff pink bag with “Victoria’s Secret” written in big, sexy cursive. As quick as I can, I stuff the bag into another bag.

I bound out of the store. I don’t look back. Once again, I pretend Victoria’s Secret doesn’t exist.

The NLC would like to slap you in the face

This video produced by the National Labor Committee has some pretty powerful images, including young Bangladeshi women sleeping with their faces smooshed against the side of their sewing machines.

I’m all for people knowing where and who make their clothes, but I think this video has some faults. The narration is a bit extreme and completely dismisses the context in which the workers live.

The narrator says that the factories reach 100-degrees in the summertime and that the worker’s clothes are covered in sweat as if the workers have a place to escape the heat. They don’t. If they weren’t at the factory, they would be sitting in 100-degree heat in their home. Granted, workers coloring cloth, using irons, or presses work in areas painfully hot year-round.

Is a woman who is allowed eight seconds to sew on a button, and who does this time and time again, any different than any factory worker anywhere in the world that puts the same widget in the same place day-in and day-out? A factory is a factory. Doing a repetitive job efficiently is factory work. I know people in Ohio who have spent most of their lives doing the same thing.

The narrator also mentions that the workers don’t have pensions or health care plans. Few people do in Bangladesh. To say it as if the workers don’t get it like everybody else in the country is misleading.

The narrator makes broad generalizations as if all of the women workers’ families are falling apart and all the supervisors beat the workers.

Without a doubt the video is shocking – somewhat misleading but shocking. Maybe that’s what people need. Personally, I want the whole story and this video is not the whole story. But maybe I saw a video like this years ago and it planted the idea for this quest. This video could be the that kernel for someone else.

Maybe we need a little slap in the face before we actually think about something.

My Ohio State vs. Michigan memories – monks

I’ve spent more than a few holidays away from home: Easter in Bangladesh, 4th of July in Guatemala, Halloween in Thailand, and Ohio State vs. Michigan in Nepal living with monks.

Ohio State vs. Michigan might not be a holiday to you, but then you must not be from Ohio or Michigan.

Yesterday’s game, which OSU won, reminded me of being in Kathmandu watching the evening news with my monk friends. The news is kind of boring when you don’t know what the heck they’re saying. So, when images of Columbus, Ohio, erupting in riots following a particularly heated OSU vs. Michigan game flashed across the screen, I perked up.

“Isn’t that where you are from?” Asked my buddy Dorjee Lama.

“Yep.”

Then silence as drunk painted people turned over cars and lit fires. The rioters made radical Maoist rebels look reasonable.

I guess I could try to explain the images to Dorjee: All this world is suffering, especially when your team loses. Instead, we just sat and watched.

Monks are peaceful. Buckeyes and Wolverines are not.

Fake Reporter or Tourist with a microphone?

It depends on who’s asking?

If it’s the Chinese government, I’m a tourist with a microphone.

China is cracking down on “fake” reporters and is famously wary of foreign journalists. Seeing how I didn’t have a press pass or any type of credentials with me whatsoever, and opted not to apply for a journalist’s visa because I probably wouldn’t be able to get one, this made me somewhat nervous during my recent visit.

I don’t work for any media outlet. I work for me. If I don’t find anything interesting, and I don’t write about it in a way that someone deems publishable, I’m not a reporter. If I do, I refer to myself as a writer, anyhow. The difference between writer and reporter is an annoying conversation of semantics. I’ve written about it before, but I annoy myself in doing so.

I’m sure the government wouldn’t have been thrilled with me trying to visit a footwear factory or the Three Gorges Dam Project. And since there weren’t a whole lot of tourists doing what I was doing, I’m sure it would have been hard to explain myself as a tourist. I was lucky and didn’t have to.

One month in the country and I didn’t have a single issue with this. It just goes to show that if a blond-haired blue-eyed dude/reporter/journalist/writer/whateverer from Ohio can go unnoticed in China’s 1.3 billion people, surely, anyone can.

I look forward to the coverage that comes out of next year’s Olympics whether it is from real reporters, fake reporters, or even dudes from Ohio.

Mr. Spit

“In China getting people to swallow their spit is really difficult,” says Beijing’s Mr. Spit in the video below, “so, we’re just trying to get people to spit in a civilized manor.

The Olympics are going to be really interesting this year. Besides the athletes running fast and jumping high, there’s the smog, the Chinese human rights debate, and the cultural conflicts like spitting.

For a preview watch this video (thanks Joel):

Rocking Cultural Arenas

If only I could rock cultural arenas like my buddy Dalton.

Yep, he’s not afraid to self-promote.

IDIOT Touron quote of the day…

“I only got seven dives in. I hope they didn’t jump the gun too soon.”

-Bob Shearer of Pennsylvania who was evacuated by military helicopter from the island of Roatan shortly before hurricane Felix devastated the region.

I really hate to use “Touron” to describe Bob. How about Inconsiderate, Dolt of Immense, Obtuse, Thoughtlessness (IDIOT). Thousands of homes and lives are threatened by one of nature’s most violent forces and Bob bitches about missing out on a few dives. They should have left Bob tied at the reef off of Roatan and let him do all of the diving he wanted to do, hurricane or no hurricane.

Here’s an update on Felix

In an Email from a Cambodian friend…

“No I did not eat any spiders as it is not the season and I don’t feel I want to eat I would prefer baby duck instead ”

Phalline loves her baby duck.

Happy 4th of July all you Ugly Americans

Today, we celebrate all things American. Namely, the cheeseburger! I’ll be eating me a few. (Actually, I’ll probably only eat one. I still have my travel appetite, which is that of an 85 year-old-grandma. That’s what rice for every meal does to me.)

In honor of American cheeseburger eaters across the nation, with their ketchup coated chins, an essay against the term “Ugly American:”

The Search for Ugly America

We’re fat. We’re loud. And we’re proud to be American. Screw the rest of the world! That’s what I say.

Think about Bram Stroker’s Dracula for a moment. Was it one of the tea drinking British twits that took out Dracula, the blood sucking Romanian, in the end? Heck NO! It was red-white-and-blue-bleeding, straight-talking, bowie-knife-toting, Yankee Quincy Morris.

I keep hearing this stuff about Ugly Americans and I don’t like it. Sure I agree that we are kind of fat and greasy, but Ugly?

Business for Diplomatic Action (BDA), a non-profit organization, is launching a program this month to teach Americans to be less Ugly. In their publication, The World Citizen’s Guide, they lay out how this can be accomplished: speak lower and softer, don’t use any slang, listen as much as you talk, and dress up.

Apparently, no matter how fast or loud we talk to foreigners they won’t be able to understand us. Who knew? And if we are wearing flip-flops and a tank top there is no way they will be able to understand us because they won’t be able to stop staring at the tufts of hair on our shoulders and back.

I am just as guilty as the rest of us. I try to be nice and polite. I don’t wear tank tops, but I have been known to talk with a strange accented, fast-paced, loud staccato when trying to get my point across to non-native English speakers. Usually this doesn’t annoy people, but it makes them laugh. It makes me laugh.

Does that make me Ugly? No, but my long straight nose does.

I do understand what the BDA is trying to accomplish. I had a friend traveling in South America on business and his co-worker was an Ugly American. They were at a market and the merchant told him how much money he owed in the local currency and my friend’s co-worker said something like: “How much is that in REAL MONEY? IN DOLLARS?

As a nation we are culturally-isolated – we border as many oceans as we do countries. Unlike Europe, where a three hour drive may take you through three countries, here in the US a three-hour drive may take you from Ohio to exotic Indiana - maybe. We aren’t used to dealing with people who don’t sound like us, who don’t use our currency, and who don’t know all of the words to “Take me out to the Ballgame.”

So we are a bit Ugly. But the French are a bit rude, the English a bit prissy, the Aussies are drunks, the Germans are perverts, the Israelis conceited, etc. etc. As humans we can’t help but label nationalities with certain qualities even if they are wrong. This sort of prejudice is not pretty, but it exists.

I’ve had foreigners tell me that I am pretty nice for an American. Of course I am. I was raised in a small town in the Mid-west by loving parents who instilled in me a strong sense of values. The Americans that these foreigners met must have been from the East or West Coast.

People on the East coast are loud and annoying; Westcoasters are a bunch of pot-smoking hippies. That’s where the Ugly Americans are. In the Mid-west and the South we’re pretty. Well maybe not people from Kentucky and Arkansas. But people from Ohio. Except for people from Cleveland or Akron – they’re strange. But people from my part of Ohio we’re great, real winners, with genuine likeability. Well, not always people on Elm Street seem to be bunch of jerks…

Regardless, of our inherent lack of beauty, if it wasn’t for the brashness and boldness that our great nation engrained in Quincey Morris the world be overrun with vampires. We’d all be minions of Dracula.

Think about that!