me

WEEK 24


At a weight of 1 1/2 pounds and a length of about 8 1/2 inches, your sea monkey has outgrown the fruit references and is now the size of a standard letter (but would take a lot more than a standard stamp to mail). Sea monkey's weekly weight gain is now about 6 ounces - not quite as much as you're putting on, but getting a lot closer. Much of that weight is coming from accumulating sea monkey fat, as well as from growing organs, bones, and muscle. By now your sea monkey's tiny face is almost fully formed, and achingly adorable - complete with a full set of eyelashes and eyebrows and a good sprinkling of hair on that head. Is your sea monkey a brunette, a blond, or a redhead? Actually right now he's snow white, since there's no pigment in that hair just yet.

Current Mood: enthralled

testin new user pic ...

Current Mood: cheerful

So ... he can swing a golf club AND be as big an idiot as anyone else. Meanwhile, in Bhopal, 25 years later, 22,000 people (the "lucky ones" who weren't part of the 3,000 who died immediately) still suffer debilitating after effects, and those responsible still refuse to accept their responsibility to clean it up. Now ...explain to me again - which is "news"?

Current Mood: cranky

Spent a fun day with the twin and the sea monkey, but still no kicking! I'm gonna have to hang around her 24/7 until I can finally feel my nephew saying hello!

Current Mood: content

One year ago today I went down Texas way to meet my girls!

Current Mood: nostalgic

SIXTH MONTH!!


WEEK 23

A window into your womb would reveal that your sea monkey's skin is a bit saggy, hanging loosely from his little body. That's because skin grows faster than fat develops, and there's not much fat to fill that skin out yet. But don't worry - the fat is about to start catching up. Beginning this week, your sea monkey (who is around 8 inches long and one pound in weight) begins to pack on the pounds (which means you will, too!) In fact, by months end, your sea monkey will be double the weight he is now (fortunately, you won't be!) Once those fat deposits are made, your sea monkey will be less transparent, too. Right now the organs and bones can still be seen through the skin, which has a red hue thanks to the developing blood veins and arteries just underneath. But by month 8, no more see-through sea monkey!

Current Mood: enthralled

brains ... everywhere ... cos ... head ... sploded ...

Current Mood: surprised

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends in the USA.


Happy Thursday to everyone else!

Current Mood: happy

WEEK 22

Forget about ounces, sea monkey. This week we're talking a whopping weight of 1 pound and a length of nearly 8 inches, about the size of a small doll. But your doll is a living one - with developing senses, including touch, sight, hearing, and taste. What's your sea monkey touching? He may grab onto the umbilical cord (there's not much else to hang onto in there) and practice the strong grip that will soon be clutching your fingers (and pulling your hair.) What's your sea monkey seeing? Though it's dark in the uterine cocoon - and even with fused eyelids - sea monkeys this age can perceive light and dark. If you shine a flashlight over your belly you might feel your sea monkey react, perhaps trying to turn away from the "bright" light. What's your sea monkey hearing? The sound of your voice and that of your partner, your heart beating, the whoosh-whoosh of your blood circulating through your body, those gastric gurgles produced by your stomach and intestines, the cats meowing, sirens, a loud TV. And what's your sea monkey tasting? Pretty much everything you're tasting (so pass the salad.)

Current Mood: enthralled

Happy Llama Day!

(thanks to Ann for reminding me)

Current Mood: calm

see more dog and puppy pictures

Current Mood: sick

From Merriam-Webster online: rogue
Pronunciation: \ˈrōg\
Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
1 : vagrant, tramp 2 : a dishonest or worthless person : scoundrel 3 : a mischievous person : scamp 4 : a horse inclined to shirk or misbehave 5 : an individual exhibiting a chance and usually inferior biological variation

Current Mood: grumpy

WEEK 21


How big is sea monkey this week? About 7 inches in length (think large banana) and almost 11 ounces in weight. And talking about bananas, you might want to eat some this week if you'd like your sea monkey to have a taste for them. Some carrots, too. That's because amniotic fluid differs from day to day depending on what you've eaten (hot chili one day, sweet banana another), and now that your sea monkey is swallowing amniotic fluid every day (for hydration, nutrition, and also to get practice swallowing and digesting) he will be getting a taste of - and a taste for - whatever's on your menu. Here's another sea monkey update: Arms and legs are finally in proportion, neurons are now connected between the brain and muscles, and cartilage throughout the body is turning to bone. Which means that when sea monkey makes his moves (which you're probably feeling by now), they're much more coordinated - no more jerky twitches.

Current Mood: enthralled

*stone cold dead from teh cutes*

Current Mood: enthralled

OOPSIE!!


Springsteen to Palace audience: 'Hello, Ohio!'
Posted: 10:11 p.m. Nov. 13, 2009


A little geography snafu couldn't keep Michigan from being rocked by Bruce Springsteen.

The iconic rocker greeted his capacity Palace audience tonight with a hearty "Hello, Ohio!" -- a reference he repeated several times over the next half-hour before catching his mistake, grinning and embarassedly describing it as "every front man's nightmare."


No matter. If anything, Springsteen only seemed spurred to compensate, ramping up the energy in what was already a rousing evening of hearty rock 'n' roll with his E Street Band.

Current Mood: amused

It's really no wonder she's my favorite author.


People of the Book
(from Laurie R. King's blog)

When I heard the news from Fort Hood last Thursday, my heart sank. Not only because of the terror and grief visited on this community of soldiers, but because of the undeniably Muslim name of the man accused.

When a man with an “American” name (ie, Germanic or Irish or Polish or Italian or Spanish or…) vents his madness on his fellow man, we don’t even see the man’s ethnicity or religious identity, looking straight past those details to the question of Why? But let a man whose mind cracks for personal reasons carry a name redolent of the Middle East, and the instant assumption is: Terrorist.

This must be what Japanese people experienced during WWII, and Germans during the Great War. (Along with Chinese and Philippinos and Asians in general, or Austrians and Swiss during the Great War—as now Sikhs and Palestinian Christians and other unrelated but be-turbanned innocents get slapped with the “Islamic terrorist” label.) And one might indeed find a fractionally higher percentage of would-be terrorists among the Islamic American population than one would among, say, Buddhist Americans or Amish Americans, just as the chances of locating a Japan sympathizer in 1943 might have been a tiny bit higher among people by the name of Takahashi and Suzuki than among the O’Douls and Kaufmanns.

I adore the diversity of my homeland. I cherish walking down the street and seeing faces all the color of the pigmentation spectrum, hearing accents from near and far, seeing hair that runs the gamut from floss-thin blond to wavy-copper to heavy-curly-black. I find it startling to see a crowd, in person or in a picture, that shows a field of white faces, and am pleased that those pictures are growing increasingly rare.

We are a small, fragile world in a big, cold universe. We are all brothers and sisters, with the closeness of a family—and all the animosity.

Hence, my sinking heart at hearing the name Nidal Malik Hasan connected with the shooting, a man whose troubles bonded with but went far beyond religious belief, whose dual nature as psychotherapist and madman is difficult to wrap one’s head around, and whose gunshots dialed the image of his community back eight years, to the fall of 2001.

We are people of the book. This is a Muslim term, used to point out that Christians, Jews, and Muslims are all built upon the foundation of one set of scriptures, for the most part what Christians know as the Old Testament. We do not agree with the interpretation the others make of the book, no more than we agree with the interpretations of others within our own religion, but we are children of one Book.

Islam means submission. A Muslim is one who submits to the will of God. And yes, there are those Muslims whose death-dealing fury makes a bitter irony out of the meaning, just as there are Christians whose espousal of violence flies in the face of the peace message carried by Jesus of Nazareth.

My son was a soldier for four years, and in the Guard for two. He was based at Fort Lewis, not Fort Hood, and he was lucky enough to make it home unwounded. On this Veteran’s Day, perhaps we can spend a moment of thought on the many stable, responsible, and patriotic Muslim soldiers wearing American uniforms, and give them a particular and fervent thanks for their persistence in serving the country they, and we, love.

Current Mood: peaceful

Ahh nostalgia. Sis and I were regulars here Friday and Saturday nights for a little over 5 years - approx 1987-94 (yep false IDs those first years for us - what were we thinking lol)

I remember when the entrance was still through the front door of the hotel and up a grand staircase! It was maybe a year later that was closed up and the back, unmarked entrance, up a dark staircase, went into use, where pretty much anything could happen, and probably did. I saw sex, drugs, and rock and roll on those stairs, and even saw someone get stabbed a half level up from the club entrance one dark night. But somehow we kept on going. It was one place where I always felt like I fit in.
We never got there before midnight, never left before 4:30 am. For a few crazy years we even went to "Club X" at the State Theater from 10-1, then on over to the City Club from 1-4.
Club X was to Goth clubs what Hot Topic is to Goth lifestyles (you know, like Taco Bell is to real Mexican food,) lol, but it was still a fun place to check out hot guys, and sometimes we could get them to follow us over to the City Club. If they made it up the stairs without freaking out we figured they were worthy of our interest.

After we moved to Lansing in 1995 we managed to go a few more times, but eventually stopped making the trek as jobs, houses, and other committments occupied our time more and more. I think the last time we were there was around 2000/2001? I think about heading over there sometimes, now that I'm back in the area, because even back then people of all ages went, and were welcomed warmly, but I dunno. Maybe it's something best left to my nostalgic memories of exurberant youth and dancing till dawn. Seeing it as *reformed* 40 year old might just taint those memories.

20 years of underground
By Sarah Klein


The lush ballroom of the Ramada Inn at Cass and Bagley was a glittering paradise for Detroit’s upper crust in the 1950s, hosting lavish social functions and Detroit’s venerable auto show.

Today, the gleaming wooden dance floor is long gone, replaced by blackened concrete where a throng of black-clad revelers sway and stomp to pulsating dark beats. The inky walls are splattered with twisted renderings of faces and other bizarre imagery; the hallways are jammed with an eye-popping cast of characters that resemble extras from a Tim Burton flick.

Welcome to the Leland City Club.

More than just a fad-du-jour for the misanthropic mall-cultured youth of today, City Club is a living, breathing piece of history and a veritable institution. Last weekend, the undisputed champion of Detroit’s underground clubs celebrated its (disputed) 20-year anniversary — a virtual eternity in the world of nightspots.

It all started back in 1978, when real estate entrepreneur Mike Higgins bought the Women’s City Club, a social club dating from the 1920s, located behind the State Theatre. Higgins turned it into a live venue, bringing in cutting-edge performers like the Stray Cats, Nina Hagen and the Dead Kennedys — a far cry from primly proper ladies’ teas.

In 1980, Higgins bought the Leland House hotel (now the Ramada). Legendary Detroit scenester/punk-rock businessman Stirling approached Higgins and pitched the idea of a goth/New Wave/punk club. Hence, the Liedernacht, which means “night song” in German, was born.

Higgins says the Liedernacht opened in November 1983, but Stirling claims opening day was Pearl Harbor Day — Dec. 7, 1984, a date corroborated by a 1985 Detroit Free Press article. The confusion over the opening date is emblematic of the club’s quirky charm — we’re talking about the same place where a missing door in the women’s bathroom wasn’t replaced for five years.

One of Stirling’s first tasks was to hire DJs; among them was an unknown from Belleville who garnered a Saturday night residency.

That was Derrick May, now internationally renowned superstar and director of the festival formerly known as the DEMF.

Local artist and collector of all things bizarre Tim Caldwell was hired to project vintage film reels on the dance floor. He fondly recalls his early days at the club.

“We would get bored, and I would mess around with Derrick, and he would mess around with me,” says Caldwell. “He taught me how to scratch a record.”

“The Smiths’ ‘How Soon is Now’ was on heavy rotation,” recalls Caldwell. “You could hear it five times a night there. I’m sure you can still hear it there today.”

Other staples included Dead or Alive, Kraftwerk, Bauhaus, Jesus and Mary Chain, and early Skinny Puppy.

Stirling’s original format was goth on Fridays, May on Saturdays, and a hardcore punk night on Sundays.

“The crowd was different every night,” he says. “Punk wasn’t that old of a genre at the time, and they didn’t use words like electronica or techno. It was all very danceable.”

Liedernacht was an instant phenomenon. John Waters’ darling drag queen Divine performed live there. Even Neal Rubin (!) wrote about the club, in his pre-column days at the News. Flipping through a scrapbook, Stirling points to photos of Liedernacht patrons, bedecked in the finest of ’80s New Wave punk: tight pants, big hair, safety pins shoved through flesh and leather, and swirling eyeliner designs nicked from Cleopatra.

“It was so much fun,” recalls Roxanne Morrison, former Liedernacht bartender. “Back then you had goths, punks, transvestites, and everyone got along. It was very united.”

Stirling left the club in 1985 to pursue other projects, and the Liedernacht was rechristened the Leland City Club. Gradually, the format shifted to primarily industrial music, and has continually morphed over the years, dipping into metal, techno and Euro-dance. These days, a bubbly electronic dance genre known as “synthpop” is all the rage.

Higgins says the DJs and customers dictate the music.

“There have been a number of changes over the years, but it’s always been underground, always been on the cutting edge” he says. “There’s a real freedom of expression as far as the entertainment.”

The club is a must visit for savvy national acts breezing through town. A partial list of celebrity visitors includes Skinny Puppy, Depeche Mode, the Beastie Boys, Smashing Pumpkins, Public Enemy, Rob Zombie, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Terence Trent D’Arby, and, of course, Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. U2 was supposed to show up in ’85, but the line was so long the members turned around and left.

City Club is the best people watching in Detroit. While the goths of yesteryear favored strictly black ensembles, today’s crowd sports screaming orange latex mini-dresses, reflective cyber gear, and billowing heads of brightly colored faux dreadlocks.

Security is strict: no cell phones, spikes, chains, aerosol containers, mini flashlights, weapons of mass destruction, and so forth; expect an airport security-style pat down upon entering. It’s only open on Fridays and Saturdays, and they don’t kick you out until 4 a.m. In true children of the night fashion, no one really shows up before midnight.

Despite its hardened exterior and sometimes frightful-looking patrons, the club has a streak of goodwill. Sybil Carter, manager for 18 years, says patrons regularly donate money and food to local charities.

“We sent care packages during Desert Storm, we do Toys for Tots every year,” she says. “A few years ago, some of our customers committed suicide, and we raised money to help pay for the funerals.”

The underground goth club with the heart of gold.

Twenty years is an incredibly long run for a club — most nightspots barely pass the five-year mark — and even more staggering for a place that does zero advertising; there isn’t even a sign to mark the entrance.

What’s the secret to success?

For one, cover has never crept above $4 — refreshing in comparison to astronomically stupid cover charges of $10-$20 that are in vogue right now. It also has a distinctly downscale vibe: It’s either a charming dive or a disgusting shit hole, depending on your tolerance for grime. In other words, if you can’t handle the occasional pile of puke in the bathroom sink, you’re better off at Bleu.

Marc Breckenridge has frequented the club since 1990, drawn by the industrial sound track and the “unique, open and outgoing regulars.”

“City Club is an intriguing cross-section of music-loving socializers,” says Breckenridge. “I’ve met a lot of good friends there. I’ve met other musicians there. … I have even fallen in love there. The place can have quite an effect.”

Perhaps the key to City Club’s success, however, is that it caters to a subculture with very few clubbing alternatives. Where else can you turn up in a head-to-toe black rubber ensemble and blend right in? Other venues have tried to capture the industrial audience, with varying degrees of success. Yet City Club, love it or hate it, remains a constant.

Speaking of which, it seems many loyal patrons have a thriving love/hate relationship with the bar — illustrated by such affectionate nicknames as “Shitty Club” — yet continue to come back, year after year.

I remember the first time I set foot in City Club, nine years ago. I went from complete immersion and adoration to total revulsion in five years flat. I stopped going regularly a few years ago, but still return once in a blue moon, just for old times’ sake. It’s sort of like the ex-boyfriend you keep going back to.

It’s also a virtual requirement for Detroiters of any musical affiliation, simply for the experience alone. Ask among your friends, and you’ll likely hear some stories about that one time they went to City Club.

Or, as one-time regular Linda Stolarski, who attended on and off for 11 years, puts it:

“I explain it as the Disneyland of industrial bars. Everyone’s gotta go at least once.”



City Club is open Fridays and Saturdays, from 10 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. It’s located at 400 Bagley in the Ramada; ask the kids in black where the door is.

Sarah Klein is a Metro Times staff writer. E-mail sklein@metrotimes.com.

Current Mood: nostalgic

WEEK 20

You've got a sea monkey the size of a small cantaloupe in your melon-size belly this week; about 10 ounces and 6 1/2 inches (crown to rump). Your ultrasound this month should be able to detect - if you want to know - whether your sea monkey is a boy or a girl. And oh boy has that sea monkey been busy. If you're having a boy, his testicles have begun their descent from the abdomen. In a few months they'll drop into the scrotum (which is still under construction). Luckily for your sea monkey, he still has plenty of room in your womb, which means there's plenty of space for twisting, turning, kicking, punching, and even an occasional somersault. If you haven't felt these acrobatics yet, you almost certainly will in the coming weeks.

Current Mood: happy

BOY oh BOY it's a BOY!!!!!!

Current Mood: excited

Oh melabonbon ... Have you seen this? You'll either love it or hate it, heh.

Current Mood: amused