Pictures of Deer

Can't get enough deer?  They're very popular lately and it is one thing the BC-HF team pursue the way some might be interested in furthering their professional careers.  Deer have beautiful structures, an ancient presence in folklore, and big ears to compliment their narrow snouts.
Deer can be given cutesy a persona, but some of the most striking images of deer are creepy ones.

Other creepy animals include bears, horses, and sloths, but horned creatures give off a very imposing vibe.

Often you see illustrations of grown deer with white spots, but only a few breeds retain spots into adulthood, and they are the Fallow Deer, the Axis Deer and the Visayan Spotted Deer.

And if the deer alone aren't doing it for you, here are some images of Audrey Hepburn her pet deer.

Cuddly Toy, part deux

   You may have read our blog about our odd psuedo-hatred of our fellow womenfolk. Many people ask us "why?" We're not hateful by nature. These are insecurities that have been taught and socially ingrained within us. Now, we're not here to hate on Barbie; just hear us out.

   I found the need to write this blog while listening to Kate Nash. I like Kate Nash. My fiance hates Kate Nash, and, maybe, I am beginning to understand why.

Great costumes! Primary colors! Great video! Low self-esteem! There's the problem. I understand that as an artist, Miss Nash may say anything she likes, and I respect that. I love the musical aspects of this song, but I linger on her feelings of constant innefficiency.

She's instantly more pretty and more interesting than me?

Give yourself some credit, Kate! You're not so bad yourself. If someone who can sing, has a record deal, is lovely, and has sequined costumes isn't enough, then what the hell am I?

Lady Gaga is out there telling you that if you're a freak, rock it out. Be that. Be you. In the words of James St. James "Throw a little glitter on it honey. Go dancing!" Are adults jazzed for their kids to hear that they are on the right track because they were born this way? Maybe. All I keep hearing at the salon is about that fucking meat suit. I get it. Yucky.

Is anyone really listening? There's more than just hype happening here, folks. Lady Gaga told me it's okay to be bisexual, which is certainly one of the friendliest thoughts I've heard on the subject. I've been told that people aren't really bi, they are just filthy nymphos who will have sex with ANYONE. I beg to differ. Yet, I digress...

While Kate Nash and Best Coast sing about how the other girl "is not like me, she's prettier, and skinnier," Taylor Swift is singing about Romeo and Juliet. Did anyone finish that fucking play? It's a fucking TRAGEDY! It ends in sadness and death, and in the end, no one wins. Taylor Swift doesn't sing about that. We are telling our little girls about happily ever after, as if it has ever been that simple. As a child, my feminist grandmother ordered special books about strong females to read to me at bedtime. These girls put on their brother's armor and went jousting and outsmarted instead of outprettying.

Thanks Disney, for all of these damned Princesses. Everybody is a fucking princess. Sure, Belle read a book, and Ariel fought the system a bit, but not without beautiful gear, long hair, and miniscule waists. If you read  the original fairytales, you'd see that Cinderella's stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to wear Cinderella's dainty slippers. Grimm's fairytales are grim as hell. Disney prettied them up, and sold you the toys. Speaking of toys and tiny waists, we have to talk about Barbie.

Barbie takes a lot of blame for body issues, so let's talk Barbie.

Barbie was basically a ripoff of a German doll called Lilli. Lilli was featured in a comic aimed at adults, thus the luscious figure. Dolls were produced more as a novelty than a plaything. Then, Ruth Handler bought one, brought it to America, and basically copied that shit.

I would like to take a moment to defend Barbie. She was always marketed as running the show. SHE drove the sweet car, not Ken. SHE went to the moon. Barbie has had every great job you can think of. Barbie seems to have gone to college. She is, after all, a veterinarian among other things. Also, over the years, Mattel has wisely edited Barbie's body. Her waist is wider, and her breasts and calves are smaller. The Barbie marketed to children is more realistic, while Barbies designed for more adult collectors retain the original body dimensions. She might still have "ideal"  proportions, but at least they are making a conscious effort, unlike the Bratz series of dolls. I hate these dolls to much to write about them...

A thing more infuriating than the fact that such degrading stereotypes exist is that young girls are totally infatuated with them.  My little sister and her best friend listen to Taylor Swift''s Speak now album on repeat 24-7.  Not only do all of the songs have the same sonic formula, but they all reinforce the act of wearing one's heart on your sleeve, getting easily caught up, and believing that every relationship is "the one."  The most well-known song on the album is the one that refers to the story of Romeo and Juliette - but only in the early romantic parts of the story, there is no mention of the tragic end which ensued the young reckless love.  As a result, my sister is convinced that every relationship I have going at the time is "the one," and that the notion of "the one" not only lives vividly, but that it ought to govern our lives.   When I once dated a guy with whom I was in every way incompatible with and then eventually stopped seeing, she began to think of it as an opportunity that I had blown and my time was running out. 

This is one of the many reasons why we love Nicki Minaj.  There is a spectacularily popular allure to the "being a princess" notion.  Being pampered, wearing pretty dresses, I get where they are coming from.  But Minaj's approach is that, yes, getting to do whatever the fuck you want is rad, but she doesn't want to be the princess, she doesn't even want to be the queen, she is the motherfucking KING.  I am not Jasmine, I am Aladdin?  Yes you most certainly are.

Taylor Swift is not the only unfortunate icon to young girls who cements this absurd sentimental notion.  Countless other pop-music soaked wretches push dependence on a romantic relationship rather than self-improvement or even general enlightenment of any kind.  As much as we like to think we are no longer in an antiquated state of pushing women towards domesticity, we continue to use the powerful tool of pop stars for evil.  Disney channel shows revolve around petty high school relationships and the characters are completely engrossed in the notion, and are shown in a belittling light when their romantic exploits fail.  We should be teaching girls that love, while a beautiful thing, is very fragile and should we fall, we can eventually recover and not let it define us.   Instead prom continues to hold a place of preposterous importance in the hearts and minds of many high school girls, and weddings become no less sensationalized.

TV: I also blame you. Women are in constant competition with each other. Commercials say to men: buy this and you will be even more awesome! Commercials say to women: you are gross, so you'd better buy this to hide how gross you truly are. Pad your bra. Put on your Spanx. Layer some more Mega Lash because you really need it, lamewad. The Axe brand commercials filled with identical "perfect" women are made by the same people who brought you Dove's Real Beauty campaign. What's wrong with this picture? 

A more tangible side-effect of the culture of insecurity that we have created is the addiction to shopping as a twisted means of self-improvement.  We are told to need this or that new thing and it becomes ingrained in our minds to the point where I've often literally been kept up at night thinking about something as futile as shoes, or lip color.  In our capitalist culture we have created a very effective system of pushing self-fullfilment, which leads us to want more and usually do anything to get it.  Some people buy drugs instead of food for their children, some people buy botox.  With the rise of self-empowerment it means there is always room for improvement, which means buy, buy, buy.

Instead of feeling impowered by the liberty to supposedly be ourselves, we instead have crippling low self-esteem.

Many of the profile pictures I've seen on facebook and myspace upset me because of their overwheming similarity to all of the others.  Most of them, especially but not limited to females, are strange combinations of people taking pictures of themselves in flattering positions while adding some element of vague ugliness to it.  Whether this is to humble themselves, counteract the obvious narcicism of taking a flattering picture of yourself for the world to see, or to push the "I'm so ugly" card to garner sympathy, it is hard to tell.  The most common incarnation of this example is a distracted but deliberate hand-to-face gesture.  I'm not sure what the psychologists would say about this, but I think it has to do with a combination of vulnerability while also wanting to be found sexually attractive.

 The need to be needed is so overtly aparent in these types of images, and BC-HF are not exempt from having portrayed ourselves in such a light.  It is embarassing to get someone else to take a photograph of you for the sole purpose of looking appealing to others.  The outstretched arm trailing off-screen to where one's own hand is holding the camera is a mainstay of internet culture.  What is more upsetting than someone posing for a picture on their own is when, in the clearly self-taken shot, the individual attempts to look aloof, away from the camers's eye, as though caught in a highly normal moment so that it makes it more acceptable somehow.  It's so weird, but we do it, and I'm almost certain you've done it, too.

If I had to pinpoint a time in history where this mentality of self worth/worthlessness began to take root, I would place it right around the time of the industrial revolution.  When people were confined to working for their uterine family, self-fulfillment was achieved by honoring your family.  One was only able to live and eat by relying on the family and therefore serving them.  Once people began to be able to get jobs in factories, they were given the freedom to leave home for the first time, and make a name for themselves as they never even considered wanting to do.  When you are relying on yourself, you become much more interested in bettering that source of energy, and once the populous became more inclined to do so, being one's own person was much more appealing and became so exciting and popular that it is what we, in my country, have dubbed "the American dream."
And American dream is the American queen, right?

Late night double feature - the Slut and the doctor

Rocky Horror Picture Show is a very sexy movie.  It is hard to tell what exactly makes it that way, because one could call the humor in it fairly silly, but the two sexiest characters are pretty easy to tell.  The transformation of Janet (SLUT) from naive to highly sensualized is a very delightful thing to watched, upstaged entirely however from Tim Curry's unparalleled portrayal of the ravenous Docot Frank N. Furter.

If his voice alone was not enough to set you atwitter, then everything about his demeanor ought to do the trick.  Confident, commanding, wicked and somehow goofy as well, Tim Curry has long been one of my favorite actors, voice or in person.  In my various revisits to movies of my childhood, I know realize what gave me such strange and different sensations whenever the villain from Ferngully sang this song...

We haven't forgotten how sexy Susan Sarandon is. With talent in many fields and big glassy eyes to boot, she is an actress I adore to see pop up on shows such as 30 Rock, or make better movies out of what would be super-lame ones, such as Stepmother.

I diodn't see this movie until I was about 14, and needless to say it rocked my fragile world.  Nothing helps you come out of your shell like the realization that men in garters and corsets is pelican-fly.  I loved everything about the film, of course, and I definately feel that I like the film better than any of the many stage productions I've seen.

What words can even express the way I feel about this movie - and really it's the movie that is the landmark, and less tha play. Sure, the written words are there, but everyone - and I mean all of the diehard fans I can mention - thinks of the movie as the unbeatable entity. I love all of the characters, all of the songs, all of the sets, all of the sly double-entendres, all of the actors, all of the everything.
It is because I love this movie so much that I can't go to group viewings of it. There are so many little props to throw and names to call out that the film itself cannot even be heard. I like to dress up, you'd better believe, but if I want to watch this movie, by God you costume-wearing plebians better shut the fuck up and stop throwing bread.  I love you but I already know the script by heart, too, I don't need to hear every word plus all of the cultural additives..it makes it like watching two movies at the same time when the original one and only is all I want to see.

Give yourself over to absolute pleasure?  I never thought that was allowed..

Son of a gun of a bitch

For approximately 89% of our lives, Holdfast and Bellacozy have lingered on the outskirts of popularity, ostracized by our own interests and intelligence.  Leaps and bounds beyond our peers mentally, we are socially stunted because of our love of wisdom and interesting facts, happily cloistered in libraries and movie theatres whilst others our age canoodled, partied, went to football games or paint-huffing socials.  Even now,  several years into adulthood, intelligence is not a prized commodity - but much to our horror, the notion of being "nerdy" has sprung into great new-found popularity.

Be warned - we. in fact are actual information addicts, so this post contains a shit ton of photographic evidence, and lots and lots of bitching inter-spliced, so you've got some scrolling ahead of you.

It is easier than you may think to tell when lenses are fake or non-existant. 



Oh, really? Then why do I still not get hit on in public places?  Nerds tend not to get picked up because they value what must come out through conversation, rather than gringing on the dancefloor, or whatever else the youths are doing these days.   



We cannot begin to convey how wretched it makes us feel to know that the act of wearing glasses is now as popular as breathing air, when once we were humiliated by being helpless without them.  The good side to this is now spectacles are accepted in polite society and a plethora of beautiful frames are available to us, however, in no time at all we were able to skim the depths of the internet for hundreds of thousands of images of youths al over the world with lens-less ray-bans, calling themselves nerdy.  Blasphemy and deceit, ladies and gentlemen.



The act of touching one's glasses to draw even more attention to them irritates me for no apparent reason.  Pushing up of the glasses has become so routine and sacred an act that not only has it become a secret language to us here at BC-HF, but we do it compulsively even when we aren't wearing them.  I'll refer again to Eva Angelina, our favorite pornstar.  Spectacled, yes, and legitimately.  But I saw a video on some site where the self-proclaimed "nerdy girl" getting fucked had her hand on her glasses the whole time.  I know you are wearing glasses, it only detracts from the reality for you to keep your manky paws on them the whole time.  Glasses are to be pushed up in punctiation, not manhandled, they should be seen as important and delicate things.




O a similar note, you can tell an actual glasses-wearer from the artifice because the well-worn spectacles will be splattered with filth.  I have to believe that the reason none of these bitches on the blog today have smudged lenses isn't because they cleaned them off prior to picture taking for showmanship's sake.





I don't know if you're familiar with "reading," sweetie, but this isn't typically how it works.  Multiple books strewn about you and you don't have anything to take notes with?  Not to mention they are all opened to the center.  Bad form. 



Do you heart them forever, for real?  Then why do I ceaselessly get remarks about World War II when I tell people I'm obsessed with Natural History. Try Albertus Seeba, fucktard.  What do you think about the kids you don't see who are playing obscure role-playing games or working on their graphic novel about phito-plankton?  Do you heart the person watching, for the umpteenth time, the extended version of LOTR Two Towers with audio commentary by the scenography department?  What about the kids hanging out in the bio department after school is over to get a sneak peek at the foetal pigs that have just arrived to be dissected?  Do you even know the difference between a field and an armchair anthropologist and why there is a line between them?  Does the schism keep you up at night?  Can you tell me what a schism might be?

This little gadget allows you to get credit for being nerd-sympathetic without risking being called "four-eyes." I would probably be a lot more OK with this nerd trend if it were limited to people wearing useless glasses around their necks instead of pretending to need glasses on their faces.

Now, it is no surprise to us that social human beings are highly artificial.  We like to stress to children that honesty is a wonderful, golden thing, but our society runs on lies.  One could not, upon arriving late to a business meeting, say that they were detained due to the uncontrollable urge to masturbate.  People for ages have adorned certain fashions without a second thought of the intrinsic meaning.  There are plenty of fur-wearing women who love animals, or people who wave the rebel flag without acknowledging its slave-driving roots.

BC HF is in no way exempt from hypocricy.  Devoted readers may note that only six months ago we posted an entry about how much we love glasses, and we do, rest assured.  It may seen a bit contradictory, however to swoon over glasses' newfound modern popularity and they rip a new one for the people who wear them.  We allow that a significant portion of the populus has ocular weakness, in which case, wear those glasses, please see.  What gets our goat is how easy it has now become for someone to identify themselves as a "nerd" while we have struggled with it our lives over.
The whole geek fad hits us just a little too close to home.
Once there was a time where I made a point to take off my glasses to get my picture taken, and now people put on frames they have gotten for free at the movie theatre and then poped the 3d lenses out of just to sit in front of their webcam.

This is not the first time that being a societal outcast has been a popular thing.  "Punk" used to be a derogatory term, not a subset of highschool cliques following "cheerleader" or "hot asian."  If businesses like Hot Topic can make money selling it, it isn't non-conformity.  Everyone loves and underdog they say, but really it seems people like the popularized socially acceptable underdog far more than actually accepting ostracized members of society for who they are.  This is why real nerds are still unpopular, and continue to be called freaks and weirdos.  Maybe I should put my money where my mouth is an accept these freaks who wear fake glasses and call themselves nerds just because they like the Harry Potter movies, they are people, too, afterall.
I might welcome them, but I haven't finished wallowing in the sea of roiling ire yet.

Live long and prosper, oh sure.  Now, unfortunately I can't think of any particularily poignant Star Trek-related commentary for this picture, my sci-fi knowledge is limited to Barbarella and Fantastic Planet.  I'm sure any of you reading now who do have any degree of Trek savvy could easily hypothesize that this wench don't know jack shit.  I do feel safe in saying these types of hussies need to be put in a stasis field.

Are you an artist, too? Is that it?  Did you somehow manage to get paint everywhere except the front of your glasses because they don't actualoly have lenses in them?

So what actually defines someone as a nerd, anyway?  The tables haven't really been turned, we just have an outpourring of people who say one thing and do another, this time wearing glasses.  Most of what we at BCHF consider to be legitimately geeky is a combination of social ineptitude and love of knowledge.  Seems simple enoughm but these days they find ways to bastardize anything, and I have to stress it takes more than liking video games and main-stream fantasy to make you truly nerdy.  True nerds like to delve as deeply and obscurely as they possibly can into various subjects, often the more nebulous the more appealing.  Here is a very brief list of some things most Hot Topic "nerds" don't really want to talk about, but if any of them interest you then welcome aboard.
Czech animators
Anthropology, not Anthropologie
Special FX makeup and staged gore
Movies you can't even find on Netflix
Outsider Artists, such as our favorite, Henry Darger
Eastern European etchings
Documentaries
Horrible things that have happened in history
Thinking in general or being able to occupy oneself without any external stimuli
Foreign policy and how none of it works
Comic Books not necessarily created by Marvel or DC, or based on motion pictures
Set Design
Model Building
How the human brain and body work
What animals look like without their skin, or as only skin
How to create pigment using natural compounds
Taxidermy forms
Diagrams of anything
Taking things apart whether or not you put them back together again
Where our food comes from
Anything concerning worldly problems and grievances
Coincidences
Conspiracy Theories
Time-Lapse photography
Decomposition
The creepier and sillier aspects of various religions
Rareties of any kind and prizing their acquisition
Fossils
The evolution of language
Art History
How various organisms defecate and similarily, how to replicate different types of scatological matter in artificial but highly-believable form
Cartoons from around the world
Learning anything, or being interested
Human psychology, Body language, and sociology
And so much more....

We have already done a number of posts about lame tattoos...This type of sleeve is what we refer to as "nebulous filler just for the hell of it"



You know how alcoholics will never admit to being one, or people who talk all the time about being depressed rarely are?  It applies to almost everything

 Whereas we get looked at as though we are extra-terrestrials for going on about various amazing and obscure historical facts, or the roots of various symbols in film, these young cats wear oversized glasses and need not even crack open a book.  If we were to approach any of them and attempt a discussion about the difference between medieval german witch trials and more modern17th century American ones*. (Asterix means there is a footnote to be found at the bottom of the page, for anyone who has never had to writer a research paper.)
I don't know who started pumping out clear-glass knock-off Wayfarers, but they certainly have ruined my life just a tiny bit more than usual.

A quick note from HF:

This is me, HF, to you little bitches. I NEED WAYFARERS TO SEE! I keep a dictionary with me when I read!I am terrified of parties. I encourage research during times of boredom. Fuck you.

The fact of the matter is, there will never be a lack of actual nerds, but these days you can bet your ass they aren't the folk at the coffee shop who are wearing goofy spectacles.  No, these days true geekery is pushed even further into the outskirts of society.  Now we are even less accepted because we have to compete with the popularized version of ourselves.


*This is actually pretty interesting for those of you who like gruesome facts.  Whereas durring the Salem witch trials they tied a woman to the stake and then started the fire around her, in Germany a few hundred years before (I know this because of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Day of Wrath) they would have the flaming pyre already started, tie the woman to the pole on the ground, raise her up and then drop her face-first into the flames.