The Shadows on My Wall Don't Sleep

This is mostly aimed at RedcatsUSA, owners of several plus size women's clothing companies (Lane Bryant catalog, Roaman's, Jessica London, Chadwicks, and Woman Within to name a few) but it applies to other companies as well.

So you are carrying clothing in sizes 14w to 34w or in one notable case, 44w. Awesome. However, I have a few questions for you.

Why do your tall sizes top out at 26w? Is there some unwritten law that says tall women can't be fat?

I, personally, straddle the line between "average" and "tall" so I thank you for increasing the inseam on "average" paints from 28 to 30 inches. Now I can find pants in my size that are just long enough (my inseam is 30.5") since apparently I'm too fat to be tall.

So you carry at least to size 34w... why are all your necklaces only 18" long then? I can't speak for all size 30w ladies but I need a necklace at least 22" to sit at "the hollow of my throat" (which is not at all hollow of course). The fit of a 22" necklace on me is about comparable to a 15" on "regular" sized woman. That 18" necklace should be more like 25" to sit properly on me.

Also, why are your bracelets just 7 to 7.5" and why do your rings stop at size 10? My bracelets are 8" for a snug fit and I have been known to get a "standard" anklet of 9" to wear as a bracelet. Oh, and my rings? The three I wear are size 10 (pinkie finger), 12 (ring finger), and 13 (thumb) on my left hand. Increase those sizes by 1 for my right hand. I'd love a ring for my index finger but the last I checked I needed a 15 for that.

I need a 9 for a toe ring.

Speaking of feet, why do most of your shoes stop at size 11 and why is the widest width you stock is a D/E? Here's another set of scary numbers for you, my shoe size? It's between a US13 and 14 in womens' shoes. I have never seen the width I need, but it's EEE/EEEE. I live in dread of needing to wear dress shoes. The last pair I bought cost me $70 and are reasonably comfortable but they had better last me a while since I haven't seen a pair in 13 "extra wide" that "cheap" since I bought them.¹

And your "plus calf" boots? I haven't seen any with a calf larger than 20.5" at size 12, which didn't even come in "wide width". This one will terrify you, my calf? Is 23 inches when measured nude. If you know any woman that takes a Misses size 6, her waist and my calf are the same size.

My point is that it isn't just the bust, waist, and hip that get larger with larger sizes. Not all "plus size" women would be dainty little things if "they just lost some weight". I could lose 100 pounds and I would still be a large woman that would be frustrated by small bracelets and narrow shoes.

And I bet my shirts would still have sleeves that are too short.

[Edit to add: Why is this woman, and others like her, modeling clothes in your catalog? She doesn't look to be a size 14 to me. Give the woman a sandwich, she has no meat on her.]

1. And when did a 2" heel get downgraded to a "low heel"? It seems like 3" has become "standard" and 4 and 5" heels are scarily common. Are the women that wear these things fucking nuts? I'm sort of used to them in the shops that cater to transvestites but I'm seeing them at a lot at Shoewawa.

"If you want more write it yourself" is the most annoying response to a "I wish there were more [fill in the blank] fic" ever.

No, not annoying, really fucking irritating. The whole point of reading fan fic (or indeed, any story) is to read something you haven't already thought of.

And the people saying "write it yourself" always come across as elitist snots, just to add to the irritation factor.

Maybe they really mean "maybe if you post some you will encourage someone else to write some too" but until one of them actually says that I'm sticking with my kneejerk reaction of "what an ass" for them.

And I want to go back to bed.

Called family, wished I didn't. The super depressed mood from Monday (when I found out that I didn't get the job I really hoped I'd get) is back with a vengeance... and friends.

Which makes the complete inability of people to follow fucking directions really fucking annoying.

sakuragi_yaya, one of the communities I started with toshirodragon has become rather popular after being mentioned on three very popular manga related sites. As I result we've gone from about 60 members to almost 300. We'd have more, and I'd be a hell of a lot less irritated with people, if people would pay attention to the first line of the "about" section. I shall quote it here with the exact styles so you can fully appreciate this rant:

Please if you wish to join comment on our public post with your DOB AND click the link on this page to join! Because of the nature of the stories you MUST be 18 to join.

This appears right above a reasonably large image so it's basically the only text on the page other than the standard blurb from LJ with the link to join.

But people apparently can't fucking read because they don't leave their DOB (just the year needed unless they are turning 18 this year) in the public post!

Ugh. Now I'm stuck between wanting to go back to bed and beating the stuffing out of a pillow or something.

Well I got my first comment on Elfwood that was so irritating that I deleted it without hesitation (I think I might have deleted one before on the nude anthro unicorn stallion...)

Having "Fuck this shit" on my fanart gallery main page, no matter how creatively displayed, just wasn't acceptable.

And to think, I left comments asking if I was an animal-person obsessed lesbian up in my SF/F gallery....

It seems I own a domain that I have no recollection of buying. I went to renew tephras.com and found that I own tephras.info, and have since the beginning of the year.

I'm very, very puzzled.

And that segues pretty well into my latest irritation. People finding stuff on my site and then grabbing domains for them and emailing me asking for more information and demanding to know my interest in the term.

The world should live in fear of my ever gaining godlike powers.

My phone reboots.

I have a TracFone and I just added airtime/minutes and after pushing a bunch of numbers it actually said "Restarting Phone Now". Bloody hell, does everything need a reboot these days?

Mark Saturday, May 31, 2042 on your calendars folks, that's the day the Death Clock says I will die. If I managed to reach my first real goal weight I'd only get myself 5 more years. Of course I think BMI is bogus since it doesn't take into account anything but mass and height.*

If I get stuck in sadistic mode I'll bite it on the same day in 2008, pessimistic (which seems likely at the moment) says April 7, 2021. Obviously I need some mind altering drugs if I want to live to retirement age.

*With my height I'd have to weigh 165 or less to have a "healthy" BMI. I don't think it's likely, even if I got my body fat percentage down to 17% (professional athlete range). This would be based on having my percentage of body fat calculated once (skin fold, not immersion, alas) and doing the math. According to that at 17% body fat I'd still be about 280 pounds. Now I'll admit that the skin fold method of determining body fat percentage is prone to error, but knowing that at 5'4" (age 12) and a size 14 (women's) I was 190 pounds I doubt I'd be likely to be all that healthy at 165 pounds and 5'9" and over 30.

Frankly, I don't give a fuck about my weight. It's a number that has little to do with volume. Having significantly more muscle mass that most women I'll always weigh more than the majority of women that wear the same size. I wouldn't mind being a size 20/22 though, even if that is the size range that sells out first on the cool stuff. :)

Oh, and if I did get down to 165 the clock claims I'd buy myself about 11 more years.

Okay, found this through a post by dewhitton but for this snarky comment you really don't need to hunt down this Amazon.com review by Anne Rice. I'm going to quote the relevant portion here:

And no, I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut, or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself.

So the scene in Interview With a Vampire where a black woman is described both as beautiful and as if carved from diorite* is all Anne's fault and I don't get to blame an editor for not catching that horrendous blunder? I literally tossed the book aside and ignored it (more than 300 pages into the book at that point) for three weeks over that one word.

*For the non-geologists, diorite is a coarse-grained, black and white rock. It's speckled. A dalmatian could be carved from diorite, not a beautiful black woman. If she needed a rock to use in the description she could have used basalt or gabbro or obsidian or onyx (to name a few). The first three are all usually black, onyx is actually more often striped but people are used to thinking of it as black due to its use in jewelry.

It really sucks to be a woman with large feet.  Particularly if you have a thing for boots. 

You see, those sexy high heeled shoes they sell in sizes larger than 12 usually aren't made for women.  And it follows that the really sexy thigh high boots in sizes larger than 12 (heck, probably most of the 11s and 12s) are likewise not made for women.  Now for the shoes that's not much of a problem, though sometimes the ankle straps are a bit short (men tend to have more delicate ankles than women do for some bizarre reason), but with boots that go more than a couple inches up the leg it's a different story. Guys have stick legs, at least compared to the gals, particularly to gals that need shoes in sizes over 12 (I'd be inclined to say over 9 in reality).

Needless to say a site like this is a bit like finding water in the middle of a desert.... it just happens to be 100 feet below the ground.

[As an aside, it's funny as hell to go shopping in a store that specializes in high heels in large sizes. I'm often the only woman there.]

Just check out the current music for why I'm snickering. :)

I should listen to this again and count the bleeps. :)

I should get his new rants I think.