The following sign hangs right near the south doors of Commerce Place downtown, and every time I walk by it irks me.

Being one who is engaged to a tradesperson, a professional electrician who goes in each day and does a good honest days work, I find this sign pretty offensive. Why do you feel the need to post a public apology for the work clothes/gear that these men and women you are contracting require to do their job? What type of person walks through a downtown building and is arrogant enough to feel insulted by the sight of worker in a hardhat and pair of coveralls? That's just as rude as putting up a sign that says "Please excuse the appearance of any teenage girl who wears skinny jeans that are two sizes too small and has handfuls of fat spilling out over their waistband, and camel-toe that could poke out an eye." Now that's offensive.

Overall, I think most people could do to have a little more respect for the tradespeople who make your lights turn on, give you indoor plumbing, and build your cities. They don't need you to make excuses for them. They preform some of the jobs that are more important to society than a lot of other people's are. Chances are, they're probably more important than yours.

I'm sorry, but WTF? Australia bans small breasts in an effort to safeguard children?
That's right, apparently if you're a woman with small breasts, you will induce pedophilia.

I honestly don't know whether to be outraged or just boggled. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally on board with pedophilia = BAD; however, when you take a fundamentally logical concept like that and then translate it into a ridiculous law like this, you lose all rationality points you once had. You can't ban certain adult publications simply because of breast size. It's incredibly offensive to declare that just because a woman sports an A cup she should automatically be suspected of being a minor, or that she's automatically spurning insidious new pedo lust in anyone watching. Child pornography should fall under the illegal category only if it ACTUALLY involves minors. I don't care if someone looks like they're under 18 -- if you can verify that they're an adult than it's not illegal. This whole things sounds a lot more like a government grasping at straws because they're all out of actual ideas.

Oh, and hey Austrialia, while we're at it -- what?
Female bodily fluids are apparently considered illegal and "obscene". (Possibly NSFW.)

Seriously? It seems the land down under *ba dum CHING!* has a lot of crazy sex laws. So Rule 1: no golden showers or similar urine fetishes at all; Rule 2: on the grounds that it may possibly have itty bitty traces of urine in it, so also is a no go for any depiction of the rare "female ejaculate". So let me get this straight -- watching a film where some dude lets go all over some woman's face is fine, very good, a-okay; if the woman has any incidental bodily fluids though then that's obscene. I'm sorry... what? We're now holding each genders' fluids to different standards? That is the stupidest example of blatant sexism I've ever heard. Basing a ban on the theory that there may be urine also does not count as justifiable reasoning in my opinion. (The whole idea that they're banning any sort of sexual fetish in the first place -- within non-violent limits obviously -- seems ludicrous to me to start with.)

So clearly I learned some new really dumb things about Australia today. Reading it back now it actually feels like a strange and slightly uncomfortable version of a "The More You Know" segment. To be honest I'm not one for usually baring my teeth at this sort of thing, but these are some of those really ridiculous types of laws that make me want to rip my hair out from both the standpoint of a woman and also just a general society viewpoint. I guess it was just one of those sorts of days.

It's a little early to be placing bets on which gossip and entertainment site has the real spoilers -- if any in fact do exist yet -- but most I've seen tend to favor the same general mix of the following two collections of upcoming character plot bunnies for SatC2. (I think it goes without saying that if you like Sex and the City and hate movie spoilers, you should stop reading now.)

1. First batch of sparkly spoiler love
2. Second serving of slightly different though not any less intriguing spoilers

Personally I really like the idea of curtaining the entire movie within the current financial recession. I think it gives us an interesting (and most likely hilarious) chance to see how each of the girls -- and when I say "girls" I am also bunching poor Big in with the ladies -- who are overall all used to having pretty free spending habits, handle the financial dip. (Hopefully it doesn't effect their wardrobes too much, I wouldn't want to see the pretty Clothing Porn aspect of the movie suffer.)

• Carrie: Main plot point seems to be that the Preston household loses their millions somehow. I can't decide whether Carrie or Big would be more traumatized by this, or if either of them really would be at all.
  
  Some sites elaborate on the Carrie story and are saying that she gets *shudder* pregnant, which are my worst dreams come true and I hope to god isn't true, because the Carrie/Big dynamic just does not do babies. It's wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong. D:
  
  Then there's the people also saying that Big cheats on Carrie, while others are saying that Aiden makes a reappearance and Carrie cheats on Big with him. *Boggled* Frankly I find both hard to believe simply because it's a "been there, done that" *groan* scenario any way you look at it. Carrie's cheated before, with Big on Aiden (WTF? Like Aiden would ever in a million years cheat with anyone. Give me a break.) in season three, and after the fallout from that incident I doubt her character would ever risk having another indiscretion, especially on Big. As for Big, I think if they make him let down Carrie one more time it's going to be overdone. We've had six television seasons of Mr. Big being an on-again-off-again douche, and the wedding betrayal from movie one was in sense the climax of their long-time relationship drama -- if they try to top it again, if you're not already a longtime Big hater then you've got to start thinking, "so WHY is Carrie with this guy...?" Hopefully I'm hoping that no cheating either way occurs, if not anything than to pay some respect to both characters and their assorted pasts. They need to stop leeching primarily off the Carrie/Big relationship drama and get a new theme. :P


• Charlotte: I highly approve of the potential Charlotte/Harry paranoid-is-he-cheating-no!-he's-building-you-a-sweet-dream-house plot. LAWLs and appropriate heartbreak and resulting sweetness will abound, as only two characters like Charlotte and Harry can pull off.


• Samantha: In a horrible way I really love the concept of Samantha's breast cancer coming back into play. It was one of my favorite story arcs though out the series, showing Samantha both at her most vulnerable and strongest moments.
  
  On the flipside, I don't know how I feel about her possibly going back to Smith. :P They already went through the trouble of bringing Samanatha back to her roots at the end of the first movie, why go all flip floppy again? At the very most I hope they just end with the two of them remaining really close friends, with Smith being there for her through her illness, etc etc. Move forward, not backward!


• Miranda: I have no idea what to think of the proposed Miranda plot. Sued for malpractice? Leaves the law firm? D: Starts a restaurant with Steve? o_O WHUT? Srsly?

I understand why some people are all outraged by some of the apparent character turns for the girls in these spoilers, but the way I look at it as soon as the sequel (and I hear now a third is in the works) was confirmed, you sort of had to expect the sad but inevitable franchise milking to begin. I think these prospective storylines both have their merits and downfalls -- but again, you sort of have to take it with a grain of salt until plot points are confirmed with IMDB or similar. In the mean time, however, I'll accept a mish-mash of the above theories until I read evidence otherwise.

For Mason's birthday this past Tuesday a bunch of us piled our collective monies together and bought him a Nintendo Wii, and among the games he has currently *cough*obtainedbyquestionablemeans*cough* includes EA Sports Active. The few reviews I've heard of the game make it sound pretty reputable, and the concept of being able to start an actual exercise regiment of some sort right at home and without paying for classes or gym memberships is pretty appealing. Thus, I'm determined to at least try and make use of EA Sports and get into a four day a week workout session in the comforts of my own basement. :D POOF! Wobbly flab to toned muscle, here I come! Hoo! Ha! *wheeze*

EDIT: We bought the little active accessory kit for the game (includes leg strap for Wii nunchuck and resistance band) and both Mason and I each began our own "6 Week Challenge" this morning (though Mason has his workouts set to either medium or hard, and I'm sticking to easy to start off with.) I did a 20ish minute full body work out, and was so proud of myself as it ended and was about to start my cool down stretches -- and then Iroh chose that moment to walk across the powerbar and turn off the Wii. NOOOOO! I didn't even get to save my first day! D:{ So after angrily locking the kitty upstairs, I did the whole workout over a second time just so it would be able to record my progress for this morning. (Does that mean I can be proud of myself x2?)

Obviously I'm starting off slow and the first workout wasn't that hard, but overall it was actually more fun than I thought it would be! The fact that I ended up having to do it twice made me extra tired at the end and my legs felt a bit jellylicious, but I'm determined to keep up with it! Go Team Me! Really, any amount of fitness more than the zero amount I had been doing before has got to be some sort of improvement, right? ^^;

So last weekend Mason had to make a run to Value Village, and in the twenty minutes we were there I ended up walking away with five (new?) beautiful sweaters. Suffice to say that I was, you can only call it, elated. Literally dancing the happy dance of happy sweater joy in the change room. With my five sweaters (some still with the original price tag on them) and Mason's two new shirts, we spent all of $42. (I got a practically brand new cashmere cardigan for $8.00! The rest of my sweater finds were $3 - $5.00!) I don't think many people I've told really understand how exciting that is to someone as frugal, but also very clothes-loving, as I.

Nevertheless, after witnessing my apparently hilarious celebratory flailing, Mason came up with the brilliant proposition that henceforth we shall embark on a single Value Village excursion once a month. The trick -- I have a maximum of only fifteen minutes once we set foot in the store to race up and down the isle(s) of my choice (change room time not included), thus preventing me from very quickly turning a cheap, monthly shopping trip into a wild money-spending extravaganza. I have it marked on my calendar and I am pumped. Pretty clothes each month for me without breaking our money-saving budget! *Hearts* X3 I figure my best strategy to keep from running around and flailing wildly all over the store is to pick one section per trip. So next up... jackets! (Or shoes... I can't decide!)

I have a very busy weekend coming up. Dinner/gaming tonight, we're going bowling for Mason's birthday tomorrow, and then bridal fair number two is up this Sunday! We got the DJ down, maybe this time we'll win some cheap photography or maybe even *shiny* a dress~? *Prepares to wade back into the bridal fair fray!*

Yesterday I went to my first bridal expo, and I learned three things. Bridal shows are:

1. full of fun!
2. full of crazy!
3. full of spam (or more specifically, they give you a giant bag which they then proceed to fill with spam at every booth you pass.)

The crazy and spam were both good crazy and good spam though. It was such a fun morning of wandering around all of the vendor booths and gushing over all of the pretty set ups and decorations and dresses~ :3 I was all starry eyed with sparkles and splendor and spent a lot of time getting lost among the maze of tables and trying to figure out where I was in the giant sea of women (and very few men who I believe most of who were drunk.) Much love to wonderful family and friends who came with me and readily accepted jobs of photo taking and spam bag carrying, and even started the day with bringing tasty Timbits~ LOOOOOOOVE!

While we sadly received no exciting phone call yesterday saying we had won the grand $15,000 wedding and Paris honeymoon prize package from the bridal show, I'm still holding out hope that we'll win something, however small, from one of the other bajillion contests we entered while we were there. Free dress? Discount photography? I will even be giggly with delight if I win half price seat covers or something. C'mon little bridal fair fairies, sprinkle some of your magic wedding contest pixie dust!

On a sour note, the sizing band on my temporary engagement ring got all bent out of shape and is pretty much useless now. I almost lost the ring more than once on Saturday so instead of Ben Moss getting very angry with me when I loose their expensive jewelery, I put it back safely in its cute little ring box. Until my actual ring comes in (hopefully next week) my left hand is feeling a little bare.

Baaaah I have lots to update with on my wedding blog! XD Bridal show number two is up in two weeks!