Pilobolus Dance Troupe - Movement, Weights, Balances, Yoga

I've been waiting since September 2005 to see the Pilobolus Dance Troupe at the Marin Center in San Rafael, CA. Finally, Saturday, January 28th arrived. I found out about the troupe while reading the So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) message board at Television Without Pity. By the way, the show is casting now for the second season if you think you can dance and want to try out.

Pilobolus (crystallinus) is a phototropic zygomycete - a sun-loving fungus that grows in barnyards and pastures. It grows on a stalk as a small bladder, pressurized by cell sap and topped with a tiny black cap filled with spores. When time and Pilobolus are ripe, this entire sporangium is blasted off with incredible force and the little spore bags can shoot over a cow like clowns out of a cannon. It's reported that the acceleration - from 0-45 mph in the first mm of flight - is the second fastest in nature.

http://www.pilobolus.com/

If I had to describe them, the words Movement, Weight, Strength, Balances and Yoga come to mind. Even though you'll see some cool images on the web, during the actual show, unbelievably the dancers do more. The only time I noticed a miss step was during the last routine when all the dancers, men and women, only had on G-Strings. I suppose they were kind of slippery by then. Hard to get a good grip.

If you ever get a chance to see Pilobolus, take it. You'll be glad you did.

I can't wait until I can see them again.

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By the way, I stayed at Inn Marin, which I recommend. Not only do they allow dogs, but they have nice big jacuzzi tubs to die for. I wish I would have spent the whole time taking bath after bath, but I ran around like a fool doing tourist stuff and only got 2 delicious baths in. Over the weekend I visited Greenhaus Spa, Culinary Institute Of America, Dean & Deluca (with over 10 types of salt), River Rock Casino, Marin Civic Center Farmers’ Market, San Rafael, Martinez Regional Shoreline and Oakville Grocery, of course. Whew, that is a lot to cram into two days. With the constant rain and having to take care of Culo, no wonder I wanted more downtime with more baths.

Calcified Stone Baby & One Eyed Kitten

Wow, gotta love the Internet. You can find out about ANYTHING if you know what to search for.

Earlier, I was watching an old episode of Law and Order Criminal Intent, "In the Dark" from October 2004. The twist had to do with a woman who was carrying a calcified baby. Of course, I was like, What the hell is that? So I immediately went over to Google and found this:

and this

HOLY MAN! Talk about nightmare producing images. I was too freaked out to do much other research, but here is the story and more pictures about this particular child from Zaire from OBGYN.net.

Stone Baby
by Dr. Andrew Folley

History

The patient is a 37-year-old Zairian female who lives in a village of Malongo at the headwaters of the Congo River. She presented with a relatively asymptomatic large abdominal mass. Examination revealed a distended abdomen with a very irregularly contoured mass present consistent with a large fibroid uterus 28-32 weeks size. The patient was having fairly regular periods. She has had eight previous pregnancies with five living children. Recommendation made for exploratory laparotomy through a midline incision with a working diagnosis of uterine leiomyomata.

Exploration through the midline incision revealed no free fluid present in the abdomen. The uterus and ovaries felt fairly normal to palpation. A large calcified spherical mass was delivered through the incision, enveloped with omental adhesions. At this point diagnosis was thought be possibly some type of splenic or mesenteric tumor. The diagnosis was finally made when a shoulder was delivered along with this mass. Finally, after the adhesions were removed, a four pound calcified fetus was removed. This appeared to be approximately a 32-week intra-abdominal pregnancy which had died and calcified.

In further questioning the patient, she stated that she had been pregnant about three years ago and everything seemed to be going fine, but "the baby never came out."

There's another trippy story at the Fuzzie Days blog. Of course there's no pictures to back it up, but I liked it anyway.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Subject: Pregnant for 46 Years
Time: 11:47:00 PM EST
Author: xxhickeyzhoneyxx

I just watched the sickest show on TV tonight on Discovery Health Channel! It was about this foreign lady who 46 years ago was pregnant and went into labor for 48 hours, but couldn't deliver so they took her to the hospital and the doctors wanted to do a c-section, but the lady next to her died giving birth so she left the hospital. Two days afterwards she said the baby quit moving and went to sleep which meant it died. 46 years later she started to have labor pains again and her adopted son took her to several doctors to find a "mass" in her stomach. The mass of course was the fetus, but she didn't tell the doctors in was a baby. They finally figured out it was a baby after thinking it was cancer. They did a CT scan and the fetus had calcified and attached itself to her bladder and uterine wall. They did surgery to remove it and God it was sick! It looked like a white baby shaped rock. You know they just had to dissected it and it still had all it's organs. All I could think was how the hell did this women live with this dead calcified baby in her for 46 years. The crazy shit ppl do never cease to amaze me!

FREAKY DEAKY!! Was feeling like she was pregnant for over 45 years really worth it for the woman to avoid getting herself checked out? It's not like death from pregnancy complications are catching or something.

Anyway, since I was on the topic of unusual babies, I had to include the cyclops kitten. Even though every other person and their dog has a copy on their blog.

According to Yahoo's "One-Eyed Cat Had Medical Condition" article, the one-eyed kitten named Cy had a for his bizarre condition, "Holoprosencephaly". It causes facial deformities, according to the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health. In the worst cases, a single eye is located where the nose should be, according to the institute's Web site.

Traci Allen, 35-year-old from Redmond in central Oregon, says the kitten she named Cy, short for Cyclops, was born the night of Dec. 28 with the single eye and no nose. Allen said she stayed up all night with the deformed kitten on her recliner, feeding Cy a liquid formula through a syringe. She says she cared for the kitten the next day as well, until it died that evening.

I love the end of the article.

Meanwhile, Cy the one-eyed cat may be dead, but it has not left the building.

Allen said she's keeping the cat's corpse in her freezer for now, in case scientists would like it for research.

She said one thing's for certain: "I'm not going to put it on eBay."

Thank goodness there's at least one person who is not out to make a buck.

Mouse Karma's Gonna Get Ya

Anyone who doubted that what goes around, comes around needs to read this story from today's San Jose Mercury News.

NEW MEXICO

Mouse Set Ablaze Spreads Fire To House

A mouse got its revenge against a homeowner who tried to dispose of it in a pile of burning leaves. The blazing creature ran back to the man's house and set it on fire.

Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner said he caught the mouse inside his house and wanted to get rid of it.

``I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house,'' Mares said from a motel room Saturday.

Village Fire Chief Juan Chavez said the burning mouse ran to just beneath a window, and the flames spread up from there and throughout the house.

No one was injured inside, but the home and everything in it was destroyed.

_______________________________________________________

Hahahahahahahaa, that's one badass mouse. That's what the man gets for using such a barbaric way to kill a mouse.

Cool Ass Sink and other Household Stuff

"OMVIVO is a new brand and a new word for conscious (OM) living (VIVO)." thus spake lead designer Joseph Licciardi and so it is.

Omvivo is one of those cool ass home design places that make you wish you had a couple spare 100s of thousands of dollars laying around so you could get their stuff. I found out about the line from a segment on my favorite HGTV show, I Want That!.

Gotta love that the whole bathroom category is called Wet. Some of Omvivo products look flat, but they are actually working sinks. In fact, the sinks are so cool, they are called Washplanes rather than something as pedestrian and old school as a Sink.

Lineae, my favorite of the sinks. I love the textured glass and overall smoothness.

Onda Yellow is fine, but I'd like a nice shade of blue instead. Something almost grey.

Goes without saying Onda Clear looks nice. This looks so easy to keep clean, I'm salivating with jealousy.

This Le Cob bathtub looks totally customizable. I'd take a double wide with blue tinged glass. The curvy part can stay white. Or maybe that opaque frosted glass. Yeah, that's the ticket.

But then again, it looks mighty slippery. Looks like you only have the faucet to grab on to when you get in and out. I wonder if the waterfall works without the bath being full? Too bad you can't see it.

Even though it looks like a slinky on it's side, the Omvivo Chaise Lounge is actually a chair.

Last but not least, I'm not exactly sure what to make of this last item. It looks phallic, but can you guess what it is?

It's the Ulisse Toilet Roll Holder. Did you get it? Not quite sure how it works, but there ya go.