#FridayReads: Shirtless Bear-Fighter

Posted on by Kelly Lynn Thomas
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I was over at a friend’s house to watch hockey, and on my way out after the game I saw a copy of a comic called Shirtless Bear-Fighter. The cover depicts a shirtless man in raggedy pants with exaggerated masculine features (seriously, his feet are huge). I paged through it and saw that this was, yes indeed, a comic about a man who fights bears while decidedly not wearing any clothes (his junk is pixelated so it remains PG-13, sort of). Curious reader that I am, I checked out Shirtless Bear-Fighter from the library via Hoopla and read it in under an hour.

Cover for the first issue of Shirtless Bear Fighter

I have several takeaways:

  1. WHAT IS THIS COMIC I DON’T EVEN KNOW
  2. BUT IT’S REALLY FUCKING FUNNY
  3. “Bear” is not limited to the large omnivorous mammal
  4. There are a lot of toilet paper and poop jokes (WHICH ARE HILARIOUS)
  5. The whole thing can be read as a fable about environmentalism and toxic masculinity
  6. ALSO IT’S REALLY FUCKING FUNNY
  7. Magic bacon.

First, if you find crude humor beneath you, don’t bother with this book. Second, if you can’t tell the difference between straight tropes and the skewering of said tropes, also probably don’t bother with this book. Still with me? GREAT.

Shirtless Bear-Fighter tells the story of a man named Shirtless, who was raised by bears in a lush mountain forest. The bears betrayed him when they killed his lover, and after that he vowed to fight every bear. Now, enraged bears are attacking major cities across the US, and the FBI calls in Shirtless to handle the problem. In the process he discovers that past events weren’t what they seemed and uncovers a plot by a greedy toilet-paper-company logger to turn the whole forest into TP. On the way Shirtless has to deal with multiple betrayals, bears high on magic bacon, and the fact that he probably definitely has a thing for Silva, the female FBI agent.

The creative team (Jody Leheup, Sebastian Girner, Nil Vendrell, and Mike Spicer) do not take anything seriously. Shirtless is a hyperbole of our culture’s idea of what men should be, and that’s exactly what gets him into trouble. The issue of Shirtless’s dead lover reveals the cavalier way men treat women and highlights exactly why that is terrible and we should maybe stop doing that right now. Silva is not hyper sexualized and proves herself to be smart and resourceful–without her, Shirtless would fail his mission to save the forest.

So, here’s a comic that takes the most exaggerated masculine tropes and handles them in a subtle, brilliant, hilarious way. I’m definitely on board for a second volume (though it seems the creators are working on other projects right now, but a girl can hope).

Miss Migraine Gets Angry

Posted on by Kelly Lynn Thomas
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Banner that says "The Adventures of Miss Migraine"

The Adventures of Miss Migraine is an ongoing column about my life with chronic migraine. This post appeared first on my blog of the same name on November 21, 2012.

When my husband got laid off in September 2012, we had to purchase our own health insurance (Note: This was pre-ACA). This was not an easy task. I had to make sure to get a plan that had reasonable specialist co-pays, that covered all of our medications, that included chiropractic and behavioral services, AND that didn’t cost a million dollars. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with the insurance. It’s not cheap and it’s not as good as what we had under my husband’s job, but it does what we need it to do.

Except when it comes to my abortive medication, namely, Maxlt.

Oh, sure, the insurance company says, we’ll let you refill that–but you only get nine pills (yes, we know your doctor prescribed you twelve pills per month) and we’re going to charge you $280! But wouldn’t you rather just take Imitrex? I mean, we’d really like you to take Imitrex. We think it’s way better than Maxlt. And you can trust us, even though we aren’t doctors or nurses. We’re an insurance company! We know what we’re doing!

(In case it wasn’t clear, the above paragraph was sarcasm.)

I knew that when I started this blog, and decided to sub-title it “A Girl’s Adventures in the United States of Pain,” that I was eventually going to have to talk about how ridiculous and (pardon my French) fucked up our healthcare situation is.

The Affordable Care Act is making things better for a lot of people, me included. Making insurance companies provide birth control with no copay is a huge thing. But what the Affordable Care Act does NOT do is force insurance companies to cover non-birth control prescriptions at a reasonable co-pay.

Let’s just say I’m furious.

I was even more furious when I called the insurance company and asked for the reason for the quantity limit. FDA regulation, they told me. Well, that’s blatantly false! Teri Robert covers this issue in her book Living Well With Migraine Disease, but basically, the FDA suggests a max of 3 pills per week to avoid rebound headaches. That works out to 12 pills per month.

My doctor’s office has clearly run into this problem many times. When I called them, they said they would send a form over asking for coverage and a quantity increase, and that it was almost always granted. This is definitely good news, but just because I will probably get the medication I need doesn’t mean I’m going to stop fighting this.

Living with migraines is a kind of hell. No one should have to suffer through more hoops and stupid red tape because an insurer wants to save a few bucks. On Monday, I’m going to be making a few phone calls.

Post script: This has since happened to me many more times. Now my co-pay for my abortive medication is $80 for 12 pills, and my new insurance company also tried to limit me to 9, citing the same “FDA regulation” as the previous one. Sigh.

Camp NaNoWriMo 2018: Week 1 recap

Posted on by Kelly Lynn Thomas
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Camp Nanowrimo 2018 Banner

Although I’ve given myself permission to fail (better) at Camp NaNoWriMo, I’m actually doing pretty well! Here are my stats for the first 10 days of this 30-day writing challenge (not including today):

  • Total words written: 7,024
  • Words left to write: 17,976
  • Average words per day: 702
  • Days without writing: 2
  • Mental breakdowns: 0
  • Emotional outbursts: 0
  • Moments of utter despair: 1

Monday through Thursday I wrote at least 800 words each day. Friday I went to a coffee shop after work to write, but foolishly left the rough draft of my novel at home. My partner had homework to do, so I busied myself with submissions instead of writing. I’m trying to stick to a regular sleep schedule, so I went to bed when we got home instead of staying up too late.

Saturday the endometriosis pain returned, so I didn’t do anything except watch documentaries on Netflix. (To be fair one of those documentaries was a literal autopsy of a dead person, so it was definitely useful for my writing.) Sunday I was still in pain and had a serious case of brain fog, so I only wrote about 200 words. Yesterday I wrote about 1,500 words, so ultimately I’m not too far behind where I should be to hit my 25,000 word goal.

I’m finding that holding myself to 800 words a day does feel somewhat like a stretch, but it’s a doable stretch that leaves me feeling accomplished for the rest of the day. (And that’s not including other writing projects, like this blog and the Tuesday Night Monologue Project!) If things keep going well, I may try to up my daily word count to 1,000 words a day.

I’ve mostly been writing early in the morning from home, but I’ve also written from my coworking space, especially on days I need coffee (like yesterday).

So for now I carry on, and we’ll see how this next week goes!