What Was I Saying...?

It's been a while since I posted one of these things; that's generally a good sign, because when I'm busy enjoying all the things I'm thankful for, I don't have to remind myself that I'm thankful for them.

Nevertheless, I'm posting one tonight, by way of thanking the universe and the wonderful people in it for all the things that make my life so good. ^.^

Three Good Things About Today

1. Did my Christmas shopping for lythandra done.


2. Got the Flim-Flam Brothers and a Super Speedy Cider Squeezy toy set from Fluttershy for Christmas.


3. Picked up an awesome and gorgeous scarf.


4. Bonus Good Thing: Had fun watching Psych.

Three Goals for Tomorrow

1. See the new Star Wars movie with lythandra and sirfox


2. Work a shift at SBX


3. Get some art done, either solo or as an art jam

Good night world, and have an awesome tomorrow. I love ya. ♥

-The Gneech

289.3, down 1.1 lbs from last week, total weight lost 29.7 lbs, average lost 0.9 lbs/week. I have shrunk out of multiple pairs of pants and shirts; even shirts that used to be on the snug size of "a good fit" are feeling roomy on me now. Some of my old work shirts are more like nightshirts now. :P

I've also found that Levis 550s, a "relaxed" cut of jean that I used to favor, is now too baggy for me to comfortably wear, even when it's the right size: I end up with large flaps of fabric hanging off the backs of my legs. I picked up some 505s, which are a more standard cut (in size 44, woot), and overall they fit nicely, except that the waistline rides a little lower than I'm used to. I wouldn't mind really, except I'm a little worried about "plumber's cleavage." It's not really a problem as long as I have a shirt long enough to stay tucked in (or a top shirt over it), but it's still something I'm not used to having to consider.

I'm starting to reach the fun part of the journey, I think. :)

-The Gneech

So as I was putting on my shoes this morning, one of the laces– which had been threatening disaster for some time– gave up and snapped right in two. Fortunately, in the closet I have a basket of extra shoelaces and other footwear necessities for just such an emergency. But it was also a good thing that happened, because it prompted me to take a good look at the shoe, and discover a massive, ugly acid burn that I hadn't noticed. Last week sometime, while pumping gas, some of the nasty stuff dripped onto the shoe, and though I thought I had cleaned it up in time, it seems not. For a minute I thought the shoe was ruined.



Now keep in mind, I love these shoes. Dressy enough to look sharp, but with a gum sole and as comfortable as any sneaker, these shoes are a major weapon in my dapperness arsenal. There was only one thing to be done! Break out the shoe polish and hope for a miracle!

I'm happy to say, the shoes were saved. :) But while I was sitting there furiously polishing, I started to wonder how many other guys there are out there who would a) be wearing a shoe like this in the first place, and b) would leap to the rescue if they found one damaged like that. I'm a writer/illustrator now, working from home on my own hours and as my own boss– I could spend the rest of my life in PJs if I wanted to, only pulling on pants for the occasional visit to Starbucks. According to the current mode of our culture, that's what I should want to do.

But I don't. Unless I'm in really dire straits, I make a point of "dressing for work" every day (even if I don't actually do it until lunchtime) and while it may be "biz cas," it's still a well-dressed "biz cas." For men especially, the bar of grooming and comportment has been set so damn low that just by doing what I consider the bare minimum, I'm still "dressed up" compared to almost everyone I meet.

My dad was of the opinion that a pocket tee was the only kind of shirt anyone should ever wear– with certain exceptions I won't wear a shirt that doesn't have at least three buttons on it. I asked for and was well pleased to receive a cordless iron from my in-laws for Christmas (and I use it regularly). Heck, I have a "shoe care emergency kit." Is all that stuff really as weird as I think it is? Or have I just been traveling in the wrong circles?

-The Gneech

Big workout today! Besides being halfway to the One Month Party (w00t), it was changeup day: 1 set of 15 reps each at +15 lbs (or as close to that as I could arrange). It definitely went faster and left me more wiped out by the end, but it also helped me get a feel for where some of my weak areas are.

( Numbers hidden behind cut. )
Weight: 326 lbs

I wish I felt like I could trust Zippy the Wonder Scale. Today's reading suggests that I've lost 5 pounds since starting, which would not be an unreasonable result... except that Friday morning it said I'd lost 9, which I frankly don't believe. So I'll keep watching the aggregate and see what the doctor's scale says in August.

And now, on to my day! I need to buy a suit today, as I'm going to a wedding in two weeks and don't really have any appropriate garb. (An outdoor wedding. In August. Do you just hate me, wedding couple? Did you plan this all as part of some elaborate vendetta I know nothing of? It's the only explanation that makes sense.)

Also ordering my drawing table and hoping to get some commish work done. Gonna be a busy day! I'd better hit the shower.

-TG

It's a good question.

-The Gneech

I just got the podcast done and posted! It wasn't easy. -.-

Anyway, that's not what this post is about. This post is about two things:

First, a great blog post regarding fashion vs. body image.

Second, well ... this:



I promise you, it isn't ponies.

-The Gneech

To heck with MicroSoft ... when I say Bing, THIS is what I mean!



-The Gneech

Every now and again, I have to go through my wardrobe, take stock, expunge everything that isn't suitable (which often tends out to be a surprisingly large amount), then sally forth into the harsh and unfriendly world of "Big and Tall" stores in an attempt to have more than two pairs of pants and one shirt still wearable.

This time I've consigned three trash bags' worth to Goodwill, with another trash bag's worth flat out discarded because they were so worn out as to be unwearable. Many of these were t-shirts that I bought for love but simply can't wear any more, either because they've shrunk, I've grown, or both -- or I wore them until they were so full of holes that one more wearing would reduce them to a thin yellow spray.

Usually, I don't toss something until I know for a fact that I just can't get into it any more; this time I was considerably more ruthless. I had a lot of items in my wardrobe that just barely fit but made me look (or feel) like a stuffed sausage, didn't really look good on me but were passable if everything else was in the laundry, or similar "Desperation Day" outfits. This is a sneakier piece of the hoarding instinct I learned from my mother but have been endeavoring to purge since college -- reinforced by the fact that every once in a blue moon, I am out of clean laundry and have to resort to a Desperation Day item.

But years of this had led there being more Desperation Day items than Every Day items. After all, the Desperation Day items don't wear out, because I almost never wear them. So this round's purge included jettisoning the Desperation Day items. Shirts that fit except for the top button? Gone. Pants that could be zipped if I lay on the floor and suck in my breath? Gone. Ties that made passers-by on the street grab at their eyes and cry out for a merciful God to strike them down? Gone. Failed attempts at Suburban Jungle merchandise? Outa there! [1]

It was a healthy thing to do, and I'm glad I did it. On the other hand, it has left me with two sets of slacks suitable for work, one pair of jeans, and almost no "casual day" shirts other than a couple of polos with the Watering Hole logo on them. So today is "Build Gneech a New Wardrobe!" day. Or possibly, because it will start with a haircut, "Gneech Makeover Day."

Stacy and Clinton, your services will not be needed, but thank you.

I have also been pondering changing up my "Geek Goatee 101" facial hair for something else, but I haven't been able to decide on a good replacement. I absolutely require something in the way of beardage, because otherwise my chin gets lost in the big pink moon that is my face. But a nautical (i.e., "Riker") beard just makes me look scraggly and itches to boot, and I'm not sure I could pull off an artsy "vertical caterpillar beard" or anything like that. So it may be that the Geek Goatee 101 will have to suffice.

-The Gneech

[1] I did reserve a pile for "sentimental items," clothes that I can't or won't wear, but don't want to get rid of, such as the t-shirt I designed for the opening of the Borders Bookstore where I once worked, or the my Call of Cthulhu and Wing Commander III promotional shirts. But they are separated out in my closet so they won't get mixed in to my actual clothes for wearing.

I aim to dress up rather than dress down; this is old news. However, there comes a point at which sartorial agony crosses into ranting insanity, and George Will has just crossed it.

Long ago, when James Dean and Marlon Brando wore it, denim was, Akst says, “a symbol of youthful defiance.” Today, Silicon Valley billionaires are rebels without causes beyond poses, wearing jeans when introducing new products. Akst’s summa contra denim is grand as far as it goes, but it only scratches the surface of this blight on Americans’ surfaces. Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults (Seinfeld, Two and a Half Men) and cartoons for adults (King of the Hill). Seventy-five percent of American “gamers” — people who play video games — are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote. In their undifferentiated dress, children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies (the six — so far — Batman adventures and Indiana Jones and the Credit-Default Swaps, coming soon to a cineplex near you). Denim is the clerical vestment for the priesthood of all believers in democracy’s catechism of leveling — thou shalt not dress better than society’s most slovenly. To do so would be to commit the sin of lookism — of believing that appearance matters. That heresy leads to denying the universal appropriateness of everything, and then to the elitist assertion that there is good and bad taste. Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances. But the appearances that people choose to present in public are cues from which we make inferences about their maturity and respect for those to whom they are presenting themselves.

Er ... what? 0.o This isn't commentary on style, this is more like the paranoid ramblings of a schizophrenic.

The only reason I happened upon this is because kinkyturtle posted a link to it, commenting that it reminded him on one of my own posts on the subject of dress (I'm guessing it was this one). I am gratified that he was quick to point out the distinction between my wistful desire that people would dress better generally compared to this column's scattershot condemnation of anyone who doesn't Act Like a Grownup for Chrissake — but at the same time to be mentioned in the same context of such raving lunacy has given me pause.

So for the record: if you like denim, please, by all means wear it. I have no idea what George Will is smoking.

-The Gneech

While I'm largely known for my signature grey fedora, another item of clothing I'm often seen in, particularly as my interest in personal fashion has gone up, is my beloved brown wool vest. Unfortunately, it's going on something like ten years old now and getting quite threadbare in spots, so I've been shopping, without much success, for a replacement.

Problem is, the only vests to be readily found are either cheapy ones for skinny teenagers (which I am not), knit sweater-vests (not what I'm looking for), or the third piece of a three-piece suit (also not what I'm looking for). Along with all the other ways men have forgotten how to dress in the past ~50 years, they've largely forgotten about the vest, at least in the US. I don't know if the same is true of the UK, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Like most items of clothing, the vest has a specific purpose — i.e., it's intended to unify the lines of the body, while being cooler than a complete coat. Originally, the vest was simply a sleeveless coat, you see. The "three piece suit" was actually trousers plus vest with an overcoat, but when the suit became its own entity, people would then start putting an overcoat on over their coat and vest, and then wondering why they bothered to have a vest. (The answer was, "because yer doin' it wrong, dumbass," but education in such matters got lost somewhere along the line.)

If you look at a two-piece suit that's tailored properly and worn buttoned, it creates a unified effect (which is why coat and trousers are either the same or compatible colors and textures). But before the days of air conditioning, it could be awfully warm in the summertime to be minding the store (or the office) in a full coat, so the vest was invented. If you look at the earliest vests, you'll notice that they had collars just like suit coats do today. Unless you were really freezing, you wouldn't wear a vest and a coat and an overcoat. It'd be like wearing a hat over another hat. If you expected to be cold at work, you'd wear a coat and an overcoat. If you expected to be warm at work, you'd wear a vest and an overcoat. (This is where the three-piece suit ended up causing so much trouble — people didn't realize that the coat of a three piece suit is an overcoat, it's just one designed to coordinate with the vest and trousers.)

Anyway!

These days, the movement in trendy fashions is to a carefully-crafted shabbiness, and has been for decades. This is nothing new, and is actually not that bad a style really, when done right. The whole "open-collar shirt, maybe V-neck, jeans pooled at the feet, unbuttoned blazer" thing is an easy look to pull off and for most guys that's all they really care about. Whatever dandies like myself may think about that, it's the way things are and there's no point in wishing it was still 1930. Given the way a lot of people dress, we have to be grateful for crafted shabbiness. ;)

But in the spirit of "be the change you want to see in the world," I make an effort to go the extra mile and actually dress better than I have to. Who knows, maybe it's my way of compensating for the permanent spare tire that no amount of exercise will ever get rid of, but as it is the major part of my appearance that I actually can control, and I am terribly vain, I'm going for it. And in the case of vests, that means special ordering, because a guy with a 52" chest just plain cannot buy vests off the rack in 2008. Ain't gonna happen.

But in a way, that's almost a blessing in disguise; because to find a proper vest, I ended up scouring the internet until I found a company that sells honest-to-goodness waistcoats. And from them I ordered one of these, one of these, and, because I've wanted one since I was a kid, one of these. (I also tried to order one of these, but was crushed to be informed that they were out of stock. I may order one of these in dark brown instead.)

"Um ... Gneech?" you may be saying (assuming you're still reading). "You're not, like, gonna start wearing a Buffalo Bill Cody costume to work, are you?" The answer is no, I'm not. For one thing, I wouldn't look good in a cravat. For another, even my dandification has limits. I'm sticking with contemporary shirts (no starched collars, thank you), necktie, and so on. As much as I would like to go around town dressed like a Time Lord, I don't think I'd be able to do it without it being a complete affectation, which is antithetical to having real style.

-The Gneech