Unless one happens to be personally involved in the LGBT community, gender variance is not something most will ever learn about in a meaningful way. Breaking the binary of man and woman comes as a shock to the average person, and when someone I know encounters gender variance I always hear about it. The retelling of the story usually has a tone similar to as though the person encountered an individual with a tattoo on their forehead. Needless to say, not following the binary can be difficult for anyone to understand.

What is “gender fluid” anyway? Well, to know gender fluidity it helps to know similar terms to avoid confusion.
Gender fluid/Gender queer: when a person’s gender identity shifts and flows between man, woman, neither, both, or something in-between.
Androgynous: This is the “in-between” identity. Androgynous individuals generally identify as being neither man nor woman, but rather something in-between.
Bi-gendered: This is the “both” identity. These people feel as though their gender is not either, but rather a combination of both man and woman.

Long story short: my gender identity shifts and changes and I don’t always feel either man or woman. With a constant and rapid changing of such a vital aspect of my identity, my gender fluidity is a very large part of my life.
I am female assigned at birth and most often identify as androgynous or masculine, so to make sure I am never too far out of my comfort zone, I try to dress in a manner without obvious gender leanings. My hair is cut very short without being “butch”, but I always have my eyeliner handy to I can doll up at a moment’s notice. Thankfully, I was also blessed with a naturally androgynous appearance so should I decide to express myself as distinctly male or female, I can pull it off without too much difficulty.

My appearance is not the only thing that shifts along with my identity. My demeanor and attitude can also change drastically.
My Significant Other has a surprising ability to keep up with my shifting gender and has absolutely no difficulty adapting to my behaviour. He is straight, so when I have more masculine leanings we go what I refer to as “Bro Mode”. When in Bro Mode he treats me exactly like any of our other guy friends. We rough house, kick ass at video games, check out girls, typical guy stuff.
My significant other owns a Fiero, which is an American-made sports car made only for a few years in the mid-to-late ’80s. He needed to get a part for the car and I went with him on a road trip to a town about an hour away to get it. On the way we were blasting tunes from the radio and talking cars. I believe the discussion was regarding my liking for modern Dodge Chargers over Challengers, Mustangs, and Camaros because of the Charger’s ability to gracefully evolve to fit the times as oppose to the other cars which seemed to directly copy/paste their features after their older generations on to modern body types (but this is just my opinion). Suddenly a love song came on the radio. Immediately we were met with an awkward hush in the conversation. Just the two of us, two bros, sitting together and listening to a love song on the radio.
This is the same guy I cuddle with every night and the same guy I bake brownies for when he’s having a bad day.
There are days when I feel more feminine and I’ll break out my adorable red and black plaid skirt, listen to Nicki Minaj, and just get bored to death of pwning noobs at Halo or Call of Duty.

These shifts can be extremely rapid or be months apart, and generally I don’t even notice them myself until I am hit with an anxiety attack over my appearance. If I have been feeling masculine and suddenly shift to being feminine, I look at myself and become upset because I’m not pretty. The worse feelings come from being masculine when I’m stuck in a woman’s body. My breasts are like a huge neon sign screaming “GIRL” when I want to be read as Man. My body is not nearly as versatile as my identity and this fact causes quite a lot of personal strain. The constant shifting is confusing and has brought me a lot of doubts. For years I suspected I was transgendered because of how deeply the pain of being physically female caused me when I felt like a man on the inside. I realized that I was incorrect. A person realizes pain more so than when there isn’t pain to be felt. In the times I was identifying as female, I didn’t notice that my identity had merely shifted and not that “being a woman wasn’t so bad right now”. Being genderfluid can be agonizing and terrible thing.

But being gender fluid can also be a liberating, fun, and amazing thing. I get a personal thrill when I’m feeling like a feminine man, these are the times I get to become a full-time drag queen! You never feel quite as fabulous as when you get to be a drag queen. I may identify as male, but love my body and take full advantage of having it. To be a man successfully tricking others to believe you are a woman is to be a successful trickster and to feel positively naughty.
When in my more “in-between” times is when I get the most looks from strangers, which is a thrill of its own. I love breaking the norm, making people think and question everything they’ve ever learned about gender and what it means to be a man or a woman. I want people to wonder, “he or she?”
When in the Summer between Junior and Senior year of high school I attended a sort of theatre camp. While they we had classes and workshops to improve our acting abilities. There would be over a hundred other people there that I had never met, so I decided to test my ability to make people question my gender. I presented as Androgynous. I wore a small amount of eyeliner and no other makeup, I wore men’s shirts and women’s pants, and I bound my chest. I noticed immediately upon arrival that I was getting second glances from complete strangers that continued for the entire time I was at this Theatre camp. I later told one of the friends I made there about my little experiment and was informed that many of the people there did in fact question what I was. I was ecstatic.

I’ve been trying to avoid a pun, but I suppose I should just do the fluid thing and go with the flow.

While this story is not based off of true events, it is based on very true experiences.  The feelings (or lack thereof) are inspired by my own experience with Clinical Depression.

I have always been a very sad person but have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to gauge the level of pain one feels compared to others. For example, I fell into a group of individuals who felt a consistent need to prove to each other how strong they are for overcoming the adversities in their lives.

“All the shit I’ve been through? It’s a miracle I haven’t already blown my fucking brains out.“

At sleepovers and around the lunch table they almost proudly display their self-inflicted scars. Some look like purple, ropy earthworms; others looked like nothing more than a faded white wrinkle. With sadness being a pain that you can’t see, these scars perform the function of creating a way to allow others to see the level of sadness they feel. The deeper the cuts, the deeper the sadness.

“This one? My mom hit me when she found out I snuck a guy over. Stupid cunt. I busted out the light bulb in my room and destroyed my arm. She went fucking ballistic!“

One friend of mine had a dad who drank too much. She has been late to school almost every day because her because he was too busy nursing a hangover to take her to school. Another friend was raped by her cousin and he is getting out of prison in a few months. Everyone has their sob stories and they all claim the pain they feel is entirely unique and entirely terrible, more so than anyone else can understand. I’ve told them before that I feel sad sometimes. This is an understatement as when I’m not feeling anything at all, all I can feel is sadness.

“Seriously? What do you have to be sad about? Your mom doesn’t hit you.”
“You’ve never been raped.”
“Your parents are together.”
“You’re gorgeous! You should smile more often!”

I confided to them in private and the reactions are always the same. If nothing is wrong then there is no reason to feel sad, you don’t deserve to talk about pain. When they don’t react with anger they react as though I were joking, pulling up at the sides of their lips to form a clownish imitation of a smile. My confession becomes a joke. Needless to say, I don’t confide in them anymore.

“Smile!”

Though what they say is true. My family lives a comfortable life, maybe even better than most. My parents are still married after 23 years and the only thing strange to happen is when my mom cries. She locks the door to her bedroom and turns off the lights. When my dad asks her what was wrong, she dismisses the event and claims to have had a headache. Her swollen eyes and mascara streaked face betray her lie.

“Don’t worry about me, it’s nothing.“

One thing my friends hang above my head, the one thing they believe they have better than me, is their relationships. They gush endlessly about the looks of their most recent flings and boy toys. They talk about these guys in a manner suggesting some great future with their new sweethearts. Without fail, the relationships they held so much stock in will crash and burn. They spend weeks crying and seeking comfort, then showing off a collection of puckered scabs so we all know how much they are hurting on the inside.

“I can’t believe he said he loved me!“

This is not to say I haven’t had boys interested in me. On the contrary, I am often the object of affection for horny teenage boys. Any time I am convinced to attend any outing or party boys flock to compete for my attention. They offer me anything they can to try and loosen me up. Alcohol just makes my stomach hurt and pot does nothing more than make my chest feel heavy and my brain feel like it’s spinning. I regard their attempts with apathy and eventually came to discover that I have no desire for relationships. Not that I avoid connecting with people, I just don’t care.

“A pretty girl like you should be happy!“

I never needed to put much effort in my appearance. I don’t get hungry so staying thin was not difficult. My mother was also blessed with good looks and she passed them down to me. My face is pale and entirely without blemishes, not even a crease on my brow like many develop through the stresses of high school.

“Smile!“

I told my mother that I feel sad sometimes. She took me to the doctor and I had to fill out a Depression check list. Each item on the list was phrased in the first person with a scale from “Never” to “All the time”.
- I have lost interest in things I use to enjoy
Never had much interest in anything.
- I have lost my appetite or over eat
Never had much of an appetite.h-I have thoughts of suicide or that life is not worth living Now that you mention it…

My mom cried when she heard the results.

“You have Clinical Depression. You will be taking this medicine. Call me in one month and keep me up-to-date on your progress, okay?“

When I began taking the medicine I was under the impression that the pills would make me able to be happy. Before being medicated I felt something like a shallow impression of real emotion and tried to express myself accordingly. Someone tells a joke, I awkwardly bark out a fake laugh. Someone else cries over the loss of a loved one, I force myself to cry with them as they break down. After becoming medicated any feelings and emotions I had were chemically clouded. I felt nothing before and now I fell even less. The only sensation I have is exhaustion. I’m tired and cold and I just want to feel.

“Smile!“
-they say and pull up at the side of their lips in a clownish imitation of a smile, mocking my inability to feel what comes to them as easily as it is for them to fall in love with a childish pursuance of romance and as easily as bringing something sharp to the soft skin on their forearm.

“Stupid cunt. She went fucking ballistic!“

Even I once thought about making myself bleed out, just to see if I can feel the cut. Just to see if I’m alive enough to bleed at all. Maybe if I created a few scars myself the people that always told me-
“What do you have to be sad about?“
-maybe they would see that I’m not okay. But then that sense of guilt overcomes me and I remember-
“Stupid cunt. What do you have to be sad about? Smile!“

I’m tired of not feeling. I’m tired of my lamentations being disregarded when I just want someone to understand. I’m tired of being told to smile. I’m tired. I’m tired. I’m tired. I’m tired. I’m tired.

“Smile!“

I made the ultimate decision to make people see and understand how much I’m suffering and not let them use my external beauty be an excuse for them to tell me I don’t have the right to feel sad. I broke a mirror and took a shard in my hand. The glass made a sound not unlike tearing a wet cloth and despite the coldness of the glass, the agonizing pain in my face was like white heat. My mouth filled with hot, viscous blood and poured down my chest. The shard ripped through the immaculate flesh of my cheek, a jagged and bloody grin scrawled through my face. I want people to see how much I hurt. I want to show them the depth of pain a person can feel. I don’t want to ever be told to smile.

I compare accessories to photos on a wall. Clothing has an intended purpose and use, like furniture. Photos on a wall is more or less to fill the empty space and make a room look “prettier”. Necklaces, cuff links, even belts seem to be of little use to me. I have a pretty enough neck and wrist, why do I need embellishments to take away from something I have that already looks good as is? As for belts, why not just get pants that fit instead of  fussing over making sure a strap around your hips matches with your shoes?

Unfortunately I’ve been needing a belt lately. Not that I want to, I would avoid it if I could. When I was a teen I weighed about 120 lbs, which was actually underweight. I looked skeletal and ill. At 20 years old now I weigh about 145. I’m self-conscious about my weight gain, but I do my best not to dwell on it. One of the biggest down sides of gaining the weight is that I now have very few pairs of pants that fit me, most are now far too small for me (having once been able to fit into a size 0). Only about three pairs of pants fit me well, I’ve got a dresser full of pants that are too small, and somehow a few pairs of pants were accrued from my sisters. My sisters are bigger than I am, and so are their pants. As a result, I needed a belt.

For a while I stuck with just holding my pants up by the waistband, absolutely dismissing any attempts by others to convince me to wear a belt. I finally caved when my Significant other showed me that a full two-litre bottle could fit into my pants with me still in them. I borrowed his belt until I had the opportunity to dig through my own dresser. I had a wide collection of belts that I gained through the years and ignored for that whole time. Most of the belts were black with silver studs, chains, or rings from my Goth days of high school, but they were far too small to even wrap around my waist. The one belt that did wrap around my waist was one given to me as a gift from an Italian exchange student. It was a Prada.

I’m a modest type of person, so a small feeling of dread washed over me at the idea that my only option was something easily recognized as being very expensive and fashionable. I was wearing shoes from Walmart, a shirt from Kohls, and a belt from Milan, Italy. Prada. I tried to cover up the belt buckle which so proclaimed “Prada Milano”, but it was simply unavoidable. Even the belt itself was decorated with “PRADAPRADAPRADAPRADA”, as though it were screaming to the world “THIS BELT IS WORTH MORE THAN YOUR LAST HOUSE PAYMENT”. Me, a person who abhorrently avoids accessories and any sign of pretentiousness was reduced to high fashion. Ironically I don’t even have a job and cannot afford to buy a different belt, so I’m stuck with my Prada belt.

My first time truly learning about GSM was in the gym locker room in 6th grade, of all places. My best friend was talking about her older sister and how she is bisexual. I had never heard of such a thing as bisexuality or homosexuality, but my only reaction was, “Huh. That’s weird.” at which point my friend said, “Well, even I’m kinda bi”.
After her coming out, it’s like the whole world suddenly turned into a rainbow flag for me. Half of my friends ended up being bisexual or gay by happenstance, not that we became friends after discovering this fact.
My brain had always been more wired for monogamy, so I only really had a huge crush on one person at a time that lasted anywhere from a few months to a few years. The first few people I fell in love with were men, but in my freshmen year of high school I found myself with an attraction to women as well.
At the time being bisexual was a fad. Everyone was bi, everyone pretended to be bi. It was cool to be bi. I was terrified that the friends of mine who were legitimately bisexual would assume I was following the fad, so I never had a true coming out. I revealed my attraction to women in small bursts, until I was finally comfortable admitting that I was completely attracted to both men and women. It’s been years, the fad of bisexuality has long since faded. My sexuality has not.

While I had completely come to terms with not being straight, my gender confusion held me in a constant state of anxiety. I wanted my love interests to be attracted to me, so I wore skirts and makeup and tried my best to look like a sexy woman. There were times I loved the way I looked and thought I was hot. Other times the idea of going out in public wearing a skirt was enough to give me a panic attack. My fantasies of having a male body became more mature as I experimented with seeing what I looked like with a flat chest and binding in private, as well as having sexual fantasies in which I had a penis. I came to realize that these fantasies were more than just that. I felt a want, a NEED to be a man. I became truly aware that I was transsexual in the Summer of 2008. I hadn’t known that there were people who felt the same as myself, so I had kept my longing to be a man to myself until I realized that my feelings were legitimate, that I wasn’t crazy.

I immersed myself in online support groups and GSM communities and learned just how complex sexual orientations and gender identities can really be. When I discovered the term Pansexual, I knew that I was in fact more than Bisexual. I never considered myself gender blind, I just found that no combination of Assignment at Birth and Gender Identity and Expression mattered to me. It’s all fair game. Some days I find myself with virtually no interest in men, some days the idea of an androgynous partner is all I have in my mind. More or less, I just go with the flow and it leads me in all directions of attraction.

My developing gender identity was a bit more stressful on me.
Transender communities have got a very tough guard up and in many communities, the members are quick to judgement and create their own molds of what a trans-man or trans-woman should be. If you don’t fit that mold, you are a fraud or you are confused. I got so use to these molds other people had created that I was in constant fear and questioned myself, “Am I really a man? Sometimes I don’t mind the fact I have a vagina, does this mean I’m not actually transsexual?”
Once again, further branching out helped me discover that there is more than just Man and Woman. There is androgynous (a combination of man and woman, or somewhere in between), bigender (feeling as though one is both man and woman), gender fluid (a fluctuating gender identity), and much more. I became more comfortable with the idea that maybe my gender isn’t entirely man at all. That I was in fact gender fluid.

Granted, my gender may be fluid but I still have an intense wish that I had been born with a male body. I don’t want breasts, I don’t want to have female reproductive organs. But there are times when I don’t hate the body I was given. I’m okay with being girly. There are just as well times at which being called “she” fills me with rage and I can’t look at myself when I shower to avoid the painful reminder of the body I was born into.

My name is Shawn. I am a Pansexual Gender Fluid Transsexual. Female assigned at birth.

Nah, I know what I want to write. But it took me a while to pick a topic. At first I was going to write about my favourite stone, amethyst, but figured if I was yawning from just writing about stones I couldn’t possibly imagine someone actually reading about it! No, I have decided to talk about masks.

I have always found myself immensely interested in masks. The very concept of putting an object over one’s face to alter the appearance was fascinating to me. One can also go a bit more figuratively and compare it to the common act of pretending to be someone you are not. To put on a facade. Masks are just a physical manifestation of this idea.

Halloween, by far my favourite day of the year, is particularly known for its inclusion of masks. In the Otherkin and Therian community (a community of people whom identify spiritually or psychologically as something other than human [animals, spirit beings such as angels or faeries, or mythological creatures) Halloween is often considered the one day a year they can "take off their masks" and dress in a manner more closely to the creature of which they identify. I personally love Halloween because of my adoration of the elaborate and creative costumes people come up with.

While masks as a whole interest me, there are specific types that I enjoy most. The first are Black Plague doctor masks. These masks look similar to gas masks made for large birds. Lenses fit the eyes and a large beak-like cone is fixed to the front. I discovered these very recently after reading an article on the comedy website Cracked which discussed fashion trends history. In the article it explained the bizarre design and reasons for the shape of the masks being that diseases were spread by "bad air" or pollution and thus explained that people who were sick or dead smelled foul, the "beaks" of the masks were filled with flowers, herbs, and spices to cover the smell of the infected air.

Black Plague doctor.

The other type of mask I love are masquerade masks. These masks usually only cover the top half of the face and are adorned with elaborate decorations. Lately I have developed an interest in hand making them. Hopefully I can make this a more serious craft instead of just letting the ideas slip into the back of my head along with all of my other abandoned project ideas. Meh. We’ll see where that goes.

But… err…. I suppose that’s all I have to say about masks right now. Talk about a lame ending, huh?

For the 5th day of my 30 day blog challenge, I am to discuss my favourite quote. Typically I am not one to put quotes to memory but there are a handful I had to choose between to be my favourite.  If you are a Nine Inch Nails fan, you may recognize the quote I posted from one of their songs, “Heresy”. The album the sang comes from, The Downward Spiral, is by far my favourite Nine Inch Nails album, but this isn’t about my favourite album, is it? No, I love the lyrics of the song, the very first line in particular.

He sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see.

I have a tendency to take lyrics and poems to have meaning a little deeper than they are probably meant to have. I have loved this lyric since I was 13 and even considered getting phrase tattooed on to my body.

I interpret the lyric to mean that often people will refuse to see facts that are blatently obvious because they are scared of  the possibility of their views being proved wrong or because they hate hearing what they don’t want to listen to. People often take extreme measures to protect their beliefs. Granted, if this is what the lyric means, Mr. Treznor was obviously discussing Christianity, but truthfully this conscept applies to other religions as well as personal morals and political standings. Anything that I person can be passionate it, really.

For instance, one person is pro-life and is debating with someone who is pro-choice. The pro-life person will become angry if the pro-choice person devalues potential life and refuse to listen to anything invalidating how serious murder is. The pro-choice person will become angry at the suggestion of a person losing rights over their own bodies and will get refuse to listen to what the pro-life person says if they even mention religion as a reason to take away a woman’s choice.

Obviously, both are very set in their view points. If this is something you are passionate about, so much of you becomes invested in strengthening this belief and when someone degrades or opposes your viewpoint, it becomes a personal matter.

This is actually a huge problem and it hurts people’s ability to gain perspective and they do not allow themselves to be challenged in their beliefs because it disables them from possibly finding a way of life or belief that makes them happier people. People become to rigid in their ways and this often causes strain in relationships or extremists. I suppose I am saying being eclectic is better for people than adhering to one strict set of person guidelines. I’ve seen many athiests make claims that Christians are constantly “shoving religion down their throats” and refuse to listen to logic, but more often than not athiests are their logic to the same extreme. They are unshakeingly skeptical of spiritual or supernatural events and are quick to tell Christans they are wrong at the very mention of faith (even if  the Christian is not actively converting others) . No group of people is innocent. Where ever there is an Us and Them situation, this behaviour will be found on both sides.

If more people just allowed themselves to see things at other perspectives and actually listen to each other, we would be more open-minded people as a whole. Imagine how smoothly the goverment would run if politicians would stop fighting and get something done.

Anyway, that’s pretty much how I interpret the lyric. I love the meaning behind the interpretation because I consider this concept all the time and use it to live by.

To make money I often work for my grandmother, whom is disabled and has a trucker husband who is not home long enough to be able to manage all that needs to be done at their farm. My significant other, a friend of ours, and myself were assigned the job of going out to the cow pasture, long abandoned by the cows that use to live there, and we were to ethnically cleans thistles out of the fields. We were armed with a weed whipper, a corn knife, a scythe, and a hoe and we fought the enemy long and hard. You see, to make the job less boring we opted to pretend the three of us were at war with the purple-flowered menace in a literal sense. Shortly after we entered battle, the thistles ally, deer flies, came at us with full force in an effort to distract us from the mission at hand. They hummed around our heads and bit at us if we gave them an opportunity to land. We were quick to bat them away if their numbers grew too great, unfortunately a more neutral party became involved when I mistakenly struck a local honey bee. It retaliated by becoming a kamakazi agent and stung me right where my armpit meets my underarm.

It smarted quite a bit, but I was fast enough and extracted the stinger and venom sack from my skin before it was there too long. The pain felt a lot like pressing a lit match to my skin. I took the pain like a champ despite how little it let up for hours. Ironically, the first thing I said was, “Thank god I’m not allergic!”

At that moment, I jinxed myself terribly. As I continued working I began feeling some nausea and light-headedness and frequently needed to take breaks from the bloody battlefields in order to recover from my wounds. All the while I felt guilt for accidentally provoking a civilian honey bee to attack me and killing it in the process. I am probably the only person in the world who genuinely feels guilty after getting stung by a bee. Anyway, by the end of the night the pain had subsided and the swelling and redness remained fairly small, about the area of a baseball. The next morning I awoke because of an agonizing itch where the bee had stung me and the swelling and grown to cover an area from my armpit to halfway to my elbow. Dizziness and nausea remained as well. By the end of the night my upper arm had swollen to be about 50% bigger than my other arm and the swelling/redness covered the area between my armpit and elbow as well as encircling over half of my arm.

At this point I got a little worried and did some research and found that I was suffering from a large local reaction, which happens to about 1/10 people who get stung by bees. I figured I should keep a closer eye on the swelling’s progression and marked the outline of the redness before I went to bed. Again, I woke up early in the morning to terrible itching. When I was finally ready to get out of bed, I looked at the marks I made and saw that the swelling had continued to get beyond the marks I made. Even more concerning, my dizziness and nausea had gotten worse and I also lost fine coordination skills and my speech suffered greatly from my slurring and stuttering. My significant other was already worried about me and it only made things worse when I told him how things had progressed. He as well as a good chunk of my friends who had seen my arm gave me a resounding “GO. TO. THE. HOSPITAL.”

My best friend’s mother happens to be a nurse and they told me to go to the clinic later in the day because it would be cheaper for me. So I called the hospital…

Family medical center, how may I help you?

Yeah, hi. I need to make an appointment.

Alright, what is your name?

Shawn Edin.

Okay, and what is the appointment concerning?

I, uh, think I’m having an allergic reaction to a bee sting.

Ohh…. *mumbles in the background to another person* [heavy with concern] Well there will be a doctor available at 2:30 and 4:30, what time should I set you up with?

Actually, could you maybe schedule the appointment later? Like, after six?

No, you cant go to the regular clinic for your issue.

This is when I started getting nervous. I didn’t see the sting as that much of an issue, more like an itchy annoyance. Until I was told I needed to see a serious, highly paid doctor to check it out.  My sister and her boyfriend took me to the hospital (but not before stopping at the pawn shop to look for a specific game) and we picked up my SO to accompany me while I saw the doctor. When we got there I got the standard, “Name? Number? Address? Year of birth?” but then I got a few questions I wasn’t use to… “Do you have a photo ID? Do you having a living will?” At this point I’m getting close to panicking. A living will?! I’m 19 for God’s sake! I expressed my worry to my SO and he did a fantastic job comforting me and assuring that the doctors would fix my problem and I would be fine.

After a good solid 20 minute long wait, I got to see a doctor whom told me that while my reaction was severe, I was not dangerously allergic. The problem is I can expect a very similar reaction if I get stung again in the future and now need to be extra careful when I’m around bees and my swelling and discomfort will persist for up to a whole week.

So, I’ve got that lovely new development to add to my list of Uncommon Ailments. Look up some pictures of Large Local Reaction to bee stings. I did, and my swelling was far worse than anything in those pictures!

This book combines horror and comedy beautifully into an amazing, elaborate plot.  It stars two underachievers who, after trying a mysterious drug only known as Soy Sauce, are sucked into a world of  terror and confusion. The drug enables it’s users to transcend time, space, and the dimensions and grants the users the ability to see Hell on Earth; provided they survive. The horror in the book is profound and plays on revulsion and disgust (a basement fills with human shit while the two protagonists fight a monster, a humanoid beast composed entirely of a community of cockroaches, swarms of flying rods exploding out of human bodies) which is a brand of horror I deeply appreciate and rarely find. The comedy is rooted more so in the personality of the characters themselves, particular the character of the book’s namesake.

I read the book online years ago while it was still just part of a series of blogs and was ecstatic when I found out that the story was going to be published. Of course, I pre-ordered the book and was able to snag a copy of the first edition of JDatE. I was quick to pass this book along to my friends to expose them to  this amazing story. At one point the book was in such high demand that a first edition copy cost over $400 on Amazon. Since then the book was handed off to a different publishing company and more editions have been printed (Get your own copy now!)

Even more exciting, this book is also being adapted into a movie and is currently finished filming and the book sequel is also in the process of being edited.

Anyway, I HIGHLY recommend reading this book. Buy, it, check it out from the library, borrow it from a friend. I don’t even care, just read this book.

But there is one area or arts that I both love and have a natural skill for, and that is Culinary Arts. Culinary Arts is unique in that it is the only art form that has to appeal to all of the senses, taste especially. I collect cook books, research cooking technique, I’ve even bought video games that are designed to almost be like person cooking instructors. Despite this, there are still fundamental resources I lack to expand my experience and knowledge regarding culinary arts. Cooking is a passion of mine, and for a short while I even seriously considered making it my career before deciding that I would keep my passion just as it is instead of pursuing a career as a chef.

For Day 3 of my 30 Day Challenge (Woo! 1/10th of the way done!) I was suppose to post about my favourite TV show, which is Chopped on the Food Network.

Chopped

Chopped is a series exposing chefs, anything from chocolatiers to personal chefs, to challenges involving a strict time limit and combining obscure ingredients.  There are three rounds and each round one chef is eliminated and the judging is based on taste, creativity of the dish, and presentation. I always pick out one favourite chef to root for the episode and watch in excitement as the stress builds for each chef. I love seeing other people display their culinary skill in ways I only wish I could both in person and on shows like Chopped. Chopped is my favourite show and I watch it whenever I can catch it on TV.

If you know me at all, this favourite will come as something of a shock. My favourite movie? It’s a 411 minute long movie from the Hallmark Channel. The 10th Kingdom.

The 10th Kingdom

With 411 minutes of movie, it is so hard to really share the details of this movie. “But Shawn!” you say, “I thought you liked horror movies? Why would a movie like THIS be your favourite?”

Well, that is a good question. While it is true that I tend to favour movies of a darker nature, I couldn’t help but fall in love with this movie. It combines midevil fantasy with modern characters that are thrust into a world of magic. Trolls, werewolves, evil stepmothers, it’s got all of the elements made for an old-school fantasy story.  The movie also has a healthy dose of camp that I cannot resist in a movie. It takes a good amount of free time to be able to watch this movie in one sitting, but it is worth the time spent. Look it up some time for a full explanation of the plot that I cant describe. I know, I’m lazy. :p