In all my years as a member of the gimp community, one of the most ridiculous things I’ve come across is the way some paras and quads polarize their para or quadness, and form little lame ass gangs where they exhalt the characteristics of their injuries.

For the life of me I could never figure this out. Are they so insecure that the only way they can feel better about themselves is so talk themselves into believing they’re somehow superior than the other half of the SCI population? I just don’t get it.

And I know that a lot of quads, no matter their level, are bitter towards paras; jealous mainly of “how they got it so much easier/better.” I’m sorry, I don’t care what type of SCI someone has, but we’re all screwed, paras and quads combined. We’ve all lost a tremendous amout of ability whether we have a C2 or a L1 break, and it’s the pits no matter how you look at it….

So let’s stop the gimp-on-gimp hate okay? It’s pointless and really fucking stupid.

- Tiff

In my skyscraper of a building that I call home, there lives a man with deep pockets. There also exists a severe wind tunnel effect that opens and closes the door like a malevolent spirit. In case you didn’t know, the taller the building and the colder it is outside, the stronger the wind tunnel becomes. And each year I’ve been living in this Different Strokes-esque residence, every Winter it’s become more intolerable; more specifically, intolerable in regards to being able to independently enter and exit the building on either the ground or parking levels…

Now, you may or may be a regular reader of my blog, but as a C6 quad (that’s my disability), I have partial use of my arms. I can move my biceps, but not my triceps; yet to the untrained eye, it may look as if I can still move my arms fine and dandy, but that’s a rouse; a rouse mainly on my part…in my desire to look as “normal” as possible. But back to the man with the deep pockets.

The man with more money than he needs, not to say he didn’t work hard to earn every penny (he did), moved into my building about a year ago.  He was retired, without children, and had progressive MS. He was however - fortunately for him - stronger in his arms than me. But he still saw the wind tunnel effect though as a nuisance and worked tirelessly to get the Board to install automatic openers on the 3 main doors we use the most. But no, the pretentious selfish Board members voted no, and we were left with impossible-to-use doors.

Well, lo and behold, I’ve come to find out just the other day that this wealthy gentleman took it upon himself to have at least one automatic opener installed on our parking level, ON HIS DIME. How cool is that?! And on top of that generosity, he also paid for my $50 remote (that is needed to use the new door). It was as if he were a silent donor. He didn’t even tell me he was going to do this! The last thing I heard from him was that he was going to continue pressing our needs to the Board.

Maybe he got sick of the bureaucratic BS? Or maybe he was feeling cashy? Who knows. What I do know however was that he did a really nice thing that day. Maybe I’ll bake him a chicken pot pie to show my gratitude.

Over in the Netherlands, there’s what’s called the Miss Ability pageant; a contest in which 12 women with visible physical disabilities - ranging from amputees to women with MS - compete on the basis of charm nd beauty, nothing more. They even strip down to silver matching bikinis and prance, limp, and roll around on stage to be judged by the whole of the Netherlands (yes, you call in to vote). I’m all for beauty advice and looking good, but this pageant reeks of exploitation.

Now if you’re interested, you can check out the pageant’s site here: Miss Ability. It’s all in Dutch so you’ll have to use a website translation service like Altavista Babelfish to change it into English, but I guarantee it’s worth it. It’s like driving past a car wreck on the freeway. Now, on one hand I’m impressed by the country’s interest and okayness (sp?) with the concept of disabled women being sexually attractive (jn fact that makes me have hope for a better world), because let’s face it, there’s nothing even remotely close to this on any US network; and it’s a damn shame too.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: I like the concept of the show, but the way it’s executed seems exploitative. When I watched the swimsuit portion on YouTube today I cringed in embarrassment for the contestants. Did they know how ridiculous they all looked up there, clothed in next to nothing? Keep the evening gown portion in the contest, sure, and even the talent portion; but is the swimsuit portion really necessary? It feels like they only put it in the show to satisfy some morbid curiosity of the average AB Dutch viewer so they can see what a disabled woman looks like when she’s almost naked. For shame.

Channel Mariah Carey from Cribs (remember her extensive pink babydoll collection in her NYC condo? Crazy, yet impressive…), and head on down to Target for…

Tiff’s Target Buy of the Week! (a new weekly blog series)

This week I’m featuring the new line of babydolls by Gillian & O’Malley, which Target is selling for V-Day. I came across this “Young Pink” chiffon babydoll for $19.99 yesterday afternoon, and my inner-girly girl nearly peed her pants. For shiz.

Impulse-buy forthwith!

So of course, I wore it to bed last night and was even MORE pleased with it. Why? It fit my fake boobs (yes, I have implants) like a glove! And let me say right now, that that’s not an easy task….

With the light-as-air like pink chiffon ruffles sitting on my lap like a perfectly frosted cake, and the tiny pink bows pressed up against my bosom like a festoon of hungry leeches….it felt like it was custom-made (did I mention it comes with a matching pink chiffon thong?!). I felt like Marie Antoinette at her most decadent.

I bought a small. Sometimes tight ‘n snug is a million times better than roomy. And I think most straight men would agree

- Tiff

First off, who knew a backless dress could look so sexy from a wheelchair?!

Granted, one needs to be a low para, skinny as fuck, and look hot on top of it all to look this good, but bravo indeed to Milena Kirchenwitz (from Macedonia…fancy) for pulling off what’s probably the hottest pic I’ve seen of a woman in a chair in a backless dress. What can I say, I’m impressed….

This pic was taken at Germany’s Beauties in Motion - International pageant last year. It’s a strictly beauty-based pageant for women who use wheelchairs, unlike Ms. Wheelchair America, and narows the finalists down to 10 before the pageant takes place. And I have to say, I like the German pageant a lot more. It’s so glamorous…and did you check-out the pics of last year’s pageant? The choreographed moves the girls were doing on-stage in their chairs was seriously some of the coolest/prettiest wheelchair shit I’ve ever seen. Who knew a country who literally killed thousands of their disabled citizens over 60 years ago, would now be hosting such a kick-ass event?

The pageant has even spawned a new European-based disabled modeling agency by the same name, featuring some smokin’ hot disabled guys too. Check it out. I wouldn’t mind meeting a few of those fellas and sharing a pint, a beer with an orange slice, or whatever they drink from their ever-so-Euro country…

- Tiff

Filed under: Funny Sh#t, Wheelchair Life — Tiffiny @ 3:32 pm

Here’s how you say “wheelchair” in a few different languages:

- Fauteuil Roulant (French)

- Sillon de Ruedas (Spanish)

- Rollstuhl (German)

- Rolstoel (Dutch)

- Sedia a Rotelle (Italian)

- Kurumaisu (Japanese)

And on the same token, if you use a wheelchair, knowing how to say “Fuck you” in a few different languages should also prove useful:

- Va te faire toutre (French)

- Jodete (Spanish)

- Fick dich (German)

- Kutding (Dutch)

- Vaffanculo (Italian)

- Mechi Baka (Japanese)

Happy swearing wheelchair people!

- Tiff

Ignorant men who stereotype women in wheelchairs.

You see, I ran across a lame ass blog today written by an even bigger lame ass, who joked about how he’s always wanted to date a woman in a wheelchair. Read on:

“I’d love to date a girl in a wheelchair. I could just sit on her lap and have her push us both around…it’s not like she couldn’t handle the weight of me sitting on her because her legs probably lack the ability to feel. And as she pushes me around on her lap, I’d go ‘WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!’

Also if I slept with her, she wouldn’t feel it anyway, so less effort. Lastly, it’s always been a dream of mine to nickname a girlfriend ‘Wheels.’ These are the things that are important to me.”

First of all, what a fucktard.

He has no idea what size queens women with spinal cord injuries really are. In fact, we need our partners to try harder than they would with able-bodied women so we can actually reach orgasm (which btw, is a million times harder with decreased sensation).

So to the guy with the fucking annoying blog: WE CAN STILL GET OFF FROM OUR G-SPOTS IDIOT! No lazy nights of beer drinking and Playstation 2 for you.

You gotta be on your A-Game, little man. You’re gonna need all the effort in the world to satisfy this chica And scrub my wheels while you’re at it…

- Tiff

Today while I in the shower (listening to my new shower radio/CD player at the same time….lovin’ it. w00t!), I was looking down at my quad hands: The curled fingers, the pasty white skin, the too short nails. Definitely not attractive you know. And then I came across the next most noticeable feature on my hands: The scars. On my left hand alone there are 3 giant white scars, all due to injuries because the burn was not felt thanks the numbness on the far side of each of my hands.

You see, if you took a Magic Marker a la Dr. Rey and drew a line down the dead center of it in a vertical fashion, you’d see that half of my hand (the middle, ring, pinky finger half) is completely numb. It’s like that because I damaged my spinal cord in the lower part of my neck; the area of the spinal cord that was created to specifically move your hands. So if you damage it there, you’re guaranteed to come out of the hospital with reaaally weird hands. Joy of joys….and btw, the docs can’t fix it.

So back to my scars, which there are many. It almost seems they are a prerequisite before you can really say “you’ve lived the quadriplegia life” truthfully. My scars are as follows: 3″ round scar on the top of my left hand from hot coffee, bought during a college night class back in 2000, a 1″ round scar near the previously mentioned scar, from hot steam escaping from a plastic dish in the microwave, a 1/4″ round scar on the side of my left hand, which accidentally rested on a hot pan while pan-frying some chicken, a perfectly round cigarette ash scar on my upper left thigh (didn’t feel the ash fall while in a dark club. It burnt through my pants), and two, horrid 3″ round scars on my left hip bone, due to placing a hot blow dryer on my lap while naked (didn’t know it was hot) either.

Actually, ALL of my scars were caused by the “couldn’t feel it” reasoning. When you can’t feel, be really, really careful. Burns are the first thing that’ll happen to ya if you’re not completely aware of what’s going on around you. Scars are not always sexy. Take it from me.

It’s been years now since this revolutionary modeling agency closed it’s doors, but it still comes to my mind every once in awhile and is definitely worth blogging about. It was called the Shot (founded by Curtis Funn and Thom Gilbert) and I’d direct you to their website if I could, but it’s no longer available. This modeling agency solely had disabled models on their rooster (27 in total), ranging from people with SCI (mainly paras) to amputees. They were a breath of fresh air in the modeling world to be sure.

The New York Times even did an expansive article on the agency way back in 1997 when they first opened their doors: Models With the Ability Break Down Barriers. Paralympians like Chris Waddell and Allison Pittman were some of their notable models, as well as para and soap star from “Port Charles,” Mitch Longley (that’s him in the Ralph Lauren ad above), to amputee Ivy Gunter.

The reason as to why the agency closed was never revealed (to my knowledge at least), but one has to guess it was due to money issues, which likely stemmed from not getting enough bookings. I wonder…if an agency like this opened again in 2008, do you think it would it have a better chance at surviving? Any thoughts on how the mainstream media has gotten better or worse regarding it’s open-mindedness to disability?

- Tiff

Lindt’s Petit Desserts for $7.99!

Target is selling the exact same box that’s offered on Lindt’s website for less than half the price ($7.99 vs $20.00). This is a deal that no chochoholic can ignore.

The box has these awesome little “faux” desserts, with everything from lemon tarts and creme brulees to tiramisus and macaroons; a seriously wicked box of chocolates.

Wheelchair life getting you down? Pissed that Britney is such a waste of space? Stressed about Barack’s chances?

Eat a Petit Dessert chocolate. It’ll help. I promise.

- Tiff