Making the Best Out of Stabbing Yourself in the Eye

So I stabbed myself in the eye last week. And I mean, like I stabbed myself in the eye. Not the eyelid. Not the eyelashes. Not the eyebrows. I stabbed myself in the eye.

When I tweeted this there were two recurring questions that came back at me:

1) How the hell did you accomplish this?
2) Can I see a picture?

Answers:

1) I was holding something and gesturing at the same time. It ended badly.

2) If you want to see a picture of my eye post-stabbing check out my Twitter stream. I know some people actually don't like to look at other people's bloody eyes (WTF, right?) so I won't just put a big jpeg of my bloody eyeball here on the blog.

The bad news: It hurt. Like a bad word. Also, I said a bad word. Not a huge surprise, but the fact of the matter is that the self-inflicted gesture-stab happened in front of the entire K-4 staff as I was doing a library presentation. So that means the bad word did too. I think they were torn between wanting to help me and wanting to send me to the office.

The good news: I'm alright. In fact, I finished my presentation while my eye seeped and then kind of forgot about the whole thing until I looked in the mirror later on and saw that I was bleeding underneath my cornea.

Some more good news: My mom happened to have some antibiotic eye drops on hand so I drove to her  place after work to put some in my bloody eye.

Some more bad news: Immediately after I put them in she said, "Oh, wait. Those might have been for the dog."

Despite having the bad luck to belong to someone who stabs themselves in the face during work hours and whose mother hands out veterinarian medications to humans, my eyeball is recovering quite nicely. It's a trooper.

Why am I blogging about this?

Now I know how it feels to be stabbed in the eye. Granted, it wasn't a stiletto, or a razor blade, or a rusty nail, but I get the idea. If I ever find myself in a writing situation where this kind of knowledge would come in handy, I've got it nicely tucked away in a brain folder marked @##$&*!!!

Right alongside that is a folder marked HOW IT FEELS TO NEARLY FREEZE TO DEATH WHILE WEARING YOUR CAT PAJAMAS, but that's a story for another time.

Thursday Thoughts

So usually I try to give you three thoughts from my head, but I'm grappling with one that has me quite perplexed at the moment. This week you just get one big thought, and I want your feedback and musings in return.

1) We know that it used to be considered attractive for women to be a bit plump, all you have to do is look at historical art to know that fat chicks used to be all the rage. I've been told this is because having some extra pounds was a sign of wealth and health. Of course we can all have a big discussion about how looking like you might die any second has become all the rage (although I sense the pendulum swinging back... oh please, let the healthy Cindy Crawford look come back in), but I'd rather talk about something else.

Men's bodies.

Actually - the historicity of men's bodies.

Here's what happened that made my thought gears click. I was watching a random movie set in a historical time and Mr. Dude Man was totally buff. And sure, he looked great in his breeches and all that, but I had to think... were guys really built like that back then? I mean... honestly.

My thoughts - anybody who was wealthy and healthy probably didn't do a lot of physical labor. Sure, some leisure sports might have kept the protein-fed in some semblance of shape, but not the finely-cut look that we're told is attractive these days.

Anybody who wasn't wealthy and healthy probably didn't have a fantastic diet. Men that had high labor jobs probably didn't have huge amounts of muscle-building protein in their everyday fare so what are the chances of them having bulging muscles? Furthermore - even those who did do a lot of physical labor - for example, a blacksmith - probably had one set of big muscles, but that's it. In this case I'm seeing a dude with great arms from manning the forge all day but a little paunchy and with chicken legs, because it's not like he's going for a five mile run after work to make sure he's well-honed all around.

So I have to wonder - did anybody (aside from The Strong Man at the circus tent) look like this dubious cinema god in breeches back then? Are we being fed 21st century sexuality along with a dash of our history lesson when we watch a movie like this?

What was considered hot for dudes, historically?

Wednesday WOLF - Earmark

I've got a collection of random information in my brain that makes me an awesome Trivial Pursuit partner, but is completely useless when it comes to real world application. Like say, job applications. I thought I'd share some of this random crap with you in the form of another acronym-ific series. I give you - Word Origins from Left Field - that's right, the WOLF. Er... ignore the fact that the "from" doesn't fit.

Here's a quick and simple one, have you ever earmarked something to call attention to it or single it out? The word derives from an old custom for marking livestock (usually pigs) that involved nicking their ears in certain ways to indicate which pigs belong to who.

And hey, now you know.