Thursday
Sep092010

Rebel without a brief

After discussing the copy jobs I'll be working on for the next couple of weeks, it was determined that I didn't need to come in tomorrow. No new briefs until Monday. Conversely, I can look forward to being slammed next week. This doesn't bother me; copywriters tend to actually produce higher-quality work with these peaks and troughs.

Having Friday off works particularly well, as a colleague who lives in my neighborhod discovered I was motorcycle shopping, and has offered me his older bike to ride for a week or two. Sort of a try before you buy type of thing. So I hope to be terrorizing East Dallas on an elderly Honda in a day or two, as long as I can snag some motorcycle insurance. Which is thankfully quite cheap.

Thursday
Sep092010

Dancing fools and mating rituals

I spotted this article in various offbeat news sections online this morning. Since I am the world's worst dancer, periodically spinning into walls and other students during my childhood ballet classes, I am not buying off on this. I still prefer tall men who can fix things.

LONDON (AP) -- John Travolta was onto something. Women are most attracted to male dancers who have big, flamboyant moves similar to the actor's trademark style, British scientists say in a new study.

Kris McCarty and colleagues at Northumbria University and the University of Gottingen in Germany asked 19 men aged 18 to 35 who were not professional dancers to dance in a laboratory for one minute to a basic drum rhythm. They filmed the men's movements with a dozen cameras, and then turned those movements into computer-generated avatars so the study could focus on moves, not appearances.

Scientists then showed the dancing avatars to 37 women, who rated their skills on a scale of 1 to 7. According to the women, the best dancers were those who had a wide range of dance moves and focused on the head, neck and torso.

The research was published this week in the journal, Biology Letters, a publication of Britain's Royal Society. It was paid for by Northumbria University.

"In principle, it is possible to break down the motion patterns that are informative and attractive to women," said Rufus Johnstone, a reader in the evolution of animal behavior at Cambridge University. He was not connected to the research.

Johnstone said there were similarities between animal mating rituals and what happens in modern dance clubs.

"There are lots of cues females use when choosing a mate, like a peacock puffing out its tail," he said. "Dancing for humans could signal whether a male is fit because it requires the expenditure of a lot of energy."

Nick Neave, an evolutionary psychologist at Northumbria University and one of the study's co-authors, said women may subconsciously judge how fit a man is by the fluidity of his dancing. He said their research was likely subjective and different cultures would have different measures for what constitutes good dancing.

Neave advised bad dancers to improve their core body moves.

"The movements around the head, neck and trunk were the most important," he said. "The good dancers had lots of different movements and used them with flair and creativity."

Johnstone said men who are bad dancers shouldn't despair.

"Among animals, courtship rituals are very important when there are very obvious physical displays," he said. "In humans, I suspect it is much more complicated and may come down to more than whether or not a man is a good dancer."

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Online:

http://www.rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/

 

Wednesday
Sep082010

"Sir, I have an addiction."

Even though I'm careful not to stuff anything else into Chez Melina these days, for both monetary and anti-clutter reasons, I still find myself occasionally cyber-shopping for lingerie.

This doesn't make a lot of sense. I already have a collection of unmentionables carefully stashed in my Georgian dresser. There is a pleasant amount of variety represented, from elegant to retro to downright slutty. There are plenty of black lace items, which are still my favorites even though I suppose one could say they're a bit cliched. I have Lise Charmel, La Perla, Valentino, Simone Perele, Elixir, Kiss Me Deadlly, and even a couple of classic boned corsets. But sometimes I'm tempted to buy even more, and I don't know why.

Perhaps it's because I keep discovering new labels. For example, there is a newish French label, Maison Close, which is on my current wish list. It's what you could describe as inventively retro-brothel, I guess. (The original Maison Close was a brothel - guess that's why.) And thankfully it's not priced like most French lingerie.

This is actually a two-piece outfit currently offered by Maison Close, which I am trying very hard not to purchase.

 

Friday
Sep032010

Some cool desktop pictures

Last year I discovered a Web site with lots of nice desktop pictures (wallpaper to PC users). It has the odd name of InterfaceLIFT, but it's chock full of nice scenery from around the world. Like this one.

 

Tuesday
Aug312010

Failure to spend

After ordering the coveted Lise Charmel Paris Frivole lingerie (see last Friday's ilustrated blog entry, 2-3 blog entries down), I was informed that the article I wanted was no longer availble.

I had ordered from an online retailer based in France. It took them almost a week to figure out what they didn't have in stock.

I'm dreadfully tempted to start telling politically incorrect jokes here but I'll try to behave. I just can't bring myself to pay full price for this stuff, no matter how delightfully slutty it is. Sigh.