NOTD: ManGlaze The Death Tar

I'm in a fairly frustrated mood right now. First of all, I'm sure I've mentioned this before, my graduate school program is heavily influenced by postmodern philosophical thinking. Unfortunately, the faculty did not feel it was necessary to share this with me before I agreed to accept my offer to join the program (and I would have declined had I known). Even more unfortunate is that I have had zero experience whatsoever in philosophy, let alone postmodernism (which mostly reads like rambling gibberish to me). So I am thrilled (not) that I have to do a 20 minute presentation this Wednesday on Anne Anlin Cheng's The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief, a book that is very interesting yet I do not understand it very well by any means, let alone well enough to create some kind of critique or analysis. How do you create a presentation on something that does not make very much sense to you? Where do you even begin? ARG.

Thanks for letting me vent. Back to nail polish....

Way back in the day when mattes weren't everywhere like they are now, I ordered from ManGlaze. I resisted for a long time because of some offensive misogynistic (IMO) pictures on their site that have since been taken down. I received great customer service and everything arrived safely. However, I didn't actually use my bottles (I ordered the black and grey) until yesterday! On Saturday afternoon, I was laying around doing homework and feeling angry and nervous about my looming presentation, when I decided to do my nails as a way to calm down. I was about to work out (we have an elliptical in our apt - it's a very cheap Schwinn (this one except ours is black) but it does the job very well) and I got dressed and ready in my workout clothes and sat down to do my mani. I went for the "sweatpants for nails look" and chose ManGlaze The Death Tar, which has now been discontinued and replaced with Matte is Murder. This was, hands down, the BEST experience I've had with a matte polish. I tend to apply very slowly, since I like to have minimal cleanup, and mattes simply cannot be applied slowly typically. This one, however, could be applied like any normal polish. The slight problem is that it was very easy to smudge - I accidentally lightly brushed my pinky against a nearby bottle and it totally smudged off. It was fixable though. It bubbled a tiny bit on my index finger but it's no big deal to me.

I put it on around 4:40PM, worked out until 6:00, and took a shower around 6:45. It was completely dry by the time I took my shower. While I worked out I was careful not to touch my nails, so I'm not sure at what point they were totally dry.

This is 2 coats with Barielle Camouflage as a basecoat and no topcoat. It's already starting to chip since it is a matte (mattes chip quickly) and I had to do laundry and dishes today. But that's ok. I only meant to wear it for the day anyway.

Indoors:


Outdoors, sunlight:


Outdoors, shade:


ManGlaze polish can be purchased here. I have to admit that I'm tempted to order Matte is Murder, Matte-Astrophe Topcoat, and Hot Mess Topcoat. Do any of you own ManGlaze? What do you think?

Thanks for reading and thanks for listening to me vent!

[Edit]: I forgot to add, if you feel like following me on Twitter to listen to my random rants and complaints about life, I'm @aclockstopped. :)

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Old NOTD: ManGlaze Matte is Murder

Out of all the matte blacks I've tried so far, I still think I like ManGlaze's best. It's not the cheapest but it is the most matte and most interesting of the bunch.

ManGlaze Matte is Murder

Ignoring the dumb dent that I made on my index finger when I decided to type before ten minutes were up, I just love this mani. Matte is Murder is the new, improved version of ManGlaze The Death Tar: it seems to be a bit darker and has more hidden shimmer in it than its predecessor. It's a perfectly matte surface, applies beautifully and, unlike a lot of mattes, is very forgiving: it dries quicker than most polishes but it doesn't dry so quickly that mucking up one stroke is going to totally ruin the finger. This was my NOTD and it held up very well, given that mattes usually are chiptastic on me immediately.

ManGlaze Matte is Murder with "David" topcoat

Here is Matte is Murder with a glossy topcoat. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get any daytime pics, otherwise, you could see the multicolored shimmer that comes out when you put a glossy topcoat on it. I actually prefer this matte. This was a real pain to remove, as are most black polishes: I had grey fingers for several hours afterwards. But that's the price you pay when you wear black!

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Dior Porcelain and ManGlaze Hot Mess topcoat

Whew, this polish dampened my enthusiasm for Dior polishes down a little bit... but still not that much.  

Dior Porcelain

Super pretty in the bottle: a very delicate pink that has bright silver shimmer in it. Just like in Black Sequins, the shimmer seems to disappear somewhere between the bottle and the nail. But it's still visible, lending the polish a more subtle shimmer that's only really obvious in the light. This was a very sheer polish... and, imo, not even enough to be worn as a sheer polish (if I had had the inclination, which I did not). It took me five coats to get rid of VNL. Luckily, Dior polishes have great formula so it was a piece of cake to do the five coats but still... five is pushing it. The dry time took a bit longer than usual (probably because there were so many coats). Either way, it was a little too delicate and bland for me. I put it on... and then felt compelled to change it a couple of hours later. 

Dior Porcelain with ManGlaze Hot Mess topcoat

I received a complimentary bottle of the Hot Mess topcoat from ManGlaze for review. I'm very glad I did (thank you!) because I really like this topcoat... and I hadn't been impressed with the photos of it at all. A regular glitter topcoat is actually different from a matte glitter topcoat, even though both are glitter. The matte glitter topcoat has a more diffuse glow to it: it's sparkly but it's more restrained somehow. You'll probably get a similar effect by mattefying a very fine silver glitter. I'm going to try building this topcoat to be an opaque polish sometime (the above picture shows two coats). I love the way it looks on top of Porcelain though: it's still delicate but has edge. 

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Graduate-level procrastination: RBL Killa Red... and then with Maybelline Colorama Sonic Sunset... and then with ManGlaze Matte-Astrophe

I have been trying to get my head back into my research and it's just not working. I spent today half-reading the papers I need for class tomorrow (discourse markers and whether men and women talk differently -- there's little solid evidence that they actually do, but people hear what they want to hear and if they want to hear women as being less confident and more meandering than men, that's how women will sound to those people). And I've been fishing through the PsycINFO database on working memory and sentence processing (lots of stuff on "non-normal" populations like those with Alzheimer's or kids with ADHD, which is only marginally useful for me since I study "normals"). Also, beating myself over the head for not being done with corpus analysis data that should've been done half a year ago. Not a very productive day. I just couldn't decide what I needed to put my energy on... and couldn't seem to force myself to sit down and whatever task needed to be done. 

It was a similar day for my nails. First, I put on one of my newly acquired RBLs from the RBL sale...

Rescue Beauty Lounge Killa Red

A tad darker IRL. Red jelly, visible nail line at three coats. Diamont was being a bitch and left tons of bubbles on a couple of nails. One of the easier red jellies in terms of application but hardly the one-coat wonder that people attribute to RBLs. So far, I've liked a lot of the RBLs I've tried... but very few feel like they're worth it to me at $18 and shipping. Which is why I'll leave my RBL hauling for the big sales. Anyway, the bubbling bugged me big time -- that and I don't really like plain red nails -- so I decided I needed to layer something over it...

Maybelline Colorama Sonic Sunset layered over RBL Killa Red 

This is one of the Colorama nail polishes I got at the same dusty as I got the Street Wears. 20¢, totally worth every single penny and then some. Flakies always enliven a polish of contrasting color. I had a super hard time showing the green-gold duochrome side of the polish so I took some photos from non-conventional angles (for me):

I love how changeable it is. Red and orange, then green and gold. So pretty. 

Close-up of Sonic Sunset over Killa Red

But then... I got bored of this combination too. So, I decided to mattefy it with my new mattefying topcoat:

Maybelline Colorama Sonic Sunset layered over RBL Killa Red, with ManGlaze Matte-Astrophe topcoat

I just love mattefied flakies! I think they look so cool. This is a great matte topcoat and offers a really nice, truly matte finish. A little overpriced, imo, considering you can get Essie Matte About You for nearly half that price: $13.13 and shipping. It's a good alternative if you like to support small boutique brands though. 

...back to work. I should at least finish my readings for tomorrow's class before my SO gets home. I like to spend time with him in the evenings though I think it might behoove me to keep working after he goes to bed... it's much better for my productivity but less fabulous on my mental health. (Sometimes I wonder how different grad school would be if I were still single. It's much easier to live a selfish, self-centered life. And I'm not saying that in a horrible judgmental way: I think there's nothing wrong with being single and if I hadn't met my SO, I would have been perfectly happy to stay single.) 

This is what I'll do. I'll go through the articles I need for class tomorrow and then I'll sit down and decide exactly which memory tests I want to use. That sounds like a good goal. Should've been done with it three hours ago but no use crying over spilt time. :P 

ETA: LOL! I had to share one of the more ridiculous "layman's terms" comparisons I've read in awhile: 

"According to an analogy proposed by Kahneman (1973) in explaining his capacity theory of attention, a person with a larger memory capacity for language may be able to draw on a larger supply of resources, like a homeowner who can draw on more amperes of current than a neighbor and can thus generate more units of heating or cooling." 

from Just & Carpenter (1992) 

...more amperes of current and can thus generate more units of heating or cooling? There was no other more accessible comparison of having more resources and thus being able to do more because one has more? Sometimes I think cognitive psychology really suffers from an inferiority complex: it wants to be a science, it IS a science, but it has the word "psychology" in it so people have to try to liken it to the natural sciences to give it validity. (Yeah, yeah, I'm going back to work now...)

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I'm a little teapot...

Okay, I'm not, but I'm exhausted and feeling terribly uncreative.  :P Just thought I'd stop in, say hello and prove that I hadn't totally fallen off the planet.

The first month (read: five weeks) of my program have been...excruciatingly busy. In an effort to make this a better degree than any of my previous endeavours I've been trying to socialize more and actually get to know people within my department. I guess that sounds kind of strange, but I'm an incredibly shy person and in the past getting to know people has been very difficult for me. Knowing that it would be a long four years without friends and supportive colleagues, I've thrown myself into the pool with great gusto. It's been worth it.. but I've been running on little to no sleep for weeks.  As a result of this, I feel that the quality of my writing (and capacity for intellectual thought) has really taken a nosedive so I'm a bit frustrated at the moment. I'm hoping it will soon pass because for the time being I have forgotten how to use punctuation and can't put together a coherent sentence.

In addition to all of the "stuff" (in general) that has been going on, my time management skills have gone to hell. Now, I need to clarify: My time management skills have never been great. Time and I are mortal enemies. Jokingly I'd refer to this as brown time or island time, in homage to my place of birth, but I think that does fellow brown people (Caribbean residents, immigrants in general etc. I could generalize further...) a huge disservice. Nobody in my family runs as late as I do. Now, the worst part of this is,I'm an incredibly organized person. Most people come to me for help organizing their life. In fact, I've kept other people (professors included) on schedule and on task and on a few occasions, I've made sense of the black hole they call their "office".  I am organized enough to have a calendar/day planner (more on the woe of the hunt for a smart phone...sometime)... so it's not as though my life isn't scheduled. But keeping to a schedule? SO NOT ME.  It does not matter that I have 3 hours to get ready; I'll take three and a half. It doesn't matter that I've got two weeks to do an assignment, I'll still be doing it up until I have to hand it in. Recently I've discovered that it's not just procrastination that kills me (though I acknowledge that it has a lot to do with it), because even though I started grant applications in August, I was still working on them the day they were due. In October. The longest grant app was two pages. Two pages do not require a month and a half of work!

I know that I can't keep operating like this or I'll be dead before the end of this degree so if anybody has any advice... I'm all ears/eyes/whatever!

* * * * *

This past weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving so happy belated gobble gobble to all of my fellow Canadians. I had the pleasure of enjoying two lovely turkeys and have promised some American friends/colleauges that I will host American Thanksgiving at my place next month. My bf (who, by the way, never actually cooks a whole chicken whenever he suggests it because "uncooked chickens are gross!") said recently that we should "try" cooking a turkey, having never done so before... I later came to find that by we, he meant me... and by turkey he meant turducken.

No, I'm not kidding. 

I always thought that turduckens were something that the guests of Jerry Springer might enjoy but apparently it's classier than all that. Stupid bird(s) is(are) going to cost an arm and a leg. Now to find more people to help us eat 20+ lbs of poultry...

Nails!

ManGlaze's "Fuggen Ugly"

 Yes, I love the gunmetal goodness that is this colour. Looks great matte, looks great with topcoat. (I cheated and extended its life by topcoating then adding Essie's MAY...) :)

Teal Fishnets
I've had this idea in my head for a while but I've barely had any time to paint my nails .(My toes are currently devoid of colour... I haven't seen them natural in about two years and I think I'm actually going to leave them bare til spring!) I have to say that I really liked this Konadicure but it just did not photograph well. Even after fifty shots this was the best that I could do. I think the lack of focus was likely due to the shine of the topcoat and the shimmer in both the base polishes as well as the Konad silver.  Oh well, I promise you that it looks great! :P

 

Base colour: China Glaze - Sexy in The City

Gradient: China Glaze - Liquid Leather; China Glaze - Rodeo Fanatic

Plate(s): m24 (flowers); m57 (fishnet)

Stamp: Konad SP - Black Pearl; Konad SP - Silver

-mKat

What I'm waiting for: Bon Jovi's new album, The Circle. (November 10th) !!

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Anti-feminist nail polish? :P

My ManGlaze order arrived today. I guess it's turning into one of those weeks where things just work. (I'm dreading the week that doesn't. LOL)

I'm excited about everything that's come in in the past few days and can't wait to get to swatching. However, I'm also loathe to remove a perfectly good mani and even though I did a half-assed job with ChG's Calypso Blue, it has been pretty good to me for four days. I'm not even wearing topcoat. Downside? One of the drawers of my filing cabinet is now so heavy, I've (inevitably) broken a nail opening it. See? The universe loves balance. Ah well. New Konadicures coming soon. I promise!

. . .

I've gotta say that I absolutely love the artwork on the ManGlaze bottles. It's kinda cliché in its "manliness", sure, but striking just the same. Kinda reminds me of those old MAD magazines...and a bit like the graffiti I can see from the subway. (I love graffiti art. I will likely commission a graffiti artist to paint an entire wall in my house one day.)


There is, of course, something decidedly anti-feminist about slathering one's tips and toes in a product named by its drunken creators as "ManGlaze" and inspired by just that. Of course, wearing any sort of cosmetic has often been construed as anti-feminist. Kinda makes me a walking contradiction now doesn't it? It's a good thing I don't buy into other people's definitions of what a "good feminist" ought to be... I might have to start scratching too many of my favourite things off my list.

What say you guys?

• Love ManGlaze, love the image.
• Love ManGlaze, hate the name.
• Mattes aren't nail polish.
• Nail polish? What's nail polish?

- mKat

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The not-so-official start of fall...

Happy (belated) Labour Day weekend!

Like many of the ladies here, I too returned to school quite recently. (As of yesterday, in fact.)

I will admit that I had some apprehension about it as I've been out of school for several months and, having finished a Masters degree, the "allure" of grad school has worn off somewhat. (By this I mean I know how much work it's going to be!) In spite of my concerns, I have been having a good time getting things organized with my advisor over the past couple of weeks and by the time I'd finished meeting all of the people in my new cohort yesterday (and catching up with my friends from the old cohort) most of my fears were allayed. Already things are shaping up quite nicely!

TransDesign
Anyway, because the universe loves balance, yesterday happened to be one of those days where everything just "worked". Among yesterday's "things that are awesome" was my order from TransDesign, an e-tailer I ran to after I'd heard that Head2Toe was no longer shipping China Glaze (Gena, ProLinc, Seche etc.) to Canada. (I like Head2Toe well enough, but I don't really order much besides polish so if you can't supply China Glaze well then...what's a girl to do?) If you e-mail Head2Toe they'll tell you that they're complying with an order from AII, China Glaze's parent company, but AII hasn't confirmed this for me and none of the other e-tailers have made mention of this so...I'm still waiting on further details.

In the meantime, I will say that my first order from TransDesign went off without a hitch. All in all, I think their costs are about on par with Head2Toe. Their price per bottle is a little less than H2T ($2.60 vs $2.99USD for a standard bottle/collection), but their shipping is a tad more expensive. (For everything I list below, I was charged $22USD for shipping.)

With a generous conversion rate this works out to less than $5CND/bottle and while this isn't "great" (you can score deals if you're anywhere near a Sallys with a coupon at the right time of year), it has the added benefit of giving you access to older collections and a greater polish selection that Sallys does not. Plus, compared to Head2Toe, shipping was fast! I ordered on the 2nd, received a postal notice on the 8th and picked up my package on the 9th. Not bad considering it was a long weekend and the fact that Canada's postal service doesn't work on Saturdays!

In addition to hauling some supplies (two empty spritzer bottles, a buffing block, nail polish wipes and striping tape), I grabbed six polishes from ChG's Retro Diva collection, eight more polishes from past collections and (I'm excited to say!) Essie's Matte About You. Of this haul I was most looking forward to Cords. (I think this is going to look awesome with Konad and/or with a matte topcoat). In retrospect however, I should have re-thought Japanese Koi and Atelier Tulle. :p

China Glaze: Retro Diva (not new, but "new" to me). (Sorry, I doubt I'll ever be so trendy that I'll have next season's polishes a season early.) :P

L-R: Cords, Thunderbird, Let's Groove, Stella, Free Love and Short & Sassy.

Other fun stuff:

L-R: Liquid Leather, Awaken, IX, Japanese Koi, Atelier Tulle, VIII, Sexy in the City and Adore.

-mKat

What I'm wearing: China Glaze's Calypso Blue
What I'm waiting for: ManGlaze Death Tar & Fuggen Ugly; Stargazer Chrome Silver
What I'm lemming: A Gelaskin for my netbook! :P (I hate fingerprints).

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BB Couture for Men swatches and BB Couture Sale!

An utterly fabulous sale is going on right now (as D has already noted but I want this to be at the top of the page for awhile)! For those on the Overall Beauty mailing list, BB Coutures are Buy 2 Get 1 FREE at OverallBeauty.com! No coupon/promo code required, but this sale expires tonight (11:59PM, August 15th, 2009). Minimum 4 free bottles and free shipping with purchases of $60+! Also, if you purchase 6 bottles, you can choose between a free BB Couture topcoat or basecoat!

For those who snoozed on joining the Overall Beauty mailing list, you have definitely lost out... but not totally, because starting at 12:01AM August 16th, non-mailing list folks can get BB Coutures at Buy 3 Get 1 FREE. Again, no promo/coupon code required, free shipping with purchases of $60+ and a limit of "only" 3 free polishes. The non-mailing list sale ends at 11:59PM August 16th, 2009.

Also, if you mention us, the Publish or Perish blog, in the comments section when you order on the 16th, non-newsletter folks have their maximum free polish limit bumped up to 4!! :D (So if you lost by snoozing, you still get a little extra by following this blog. ;))

Now, the important stuff... swatches of the brand new line of BB Couture for Men polishes!

Thanks to Kim at Overall Beauty, I got to test run these polishes a few days early and they, like, all the other BB Coutures I've tried, are some of the most tractable polishes I've ever used: they go where you want them to go. They don't go elsewhere on the nail. You put your brush down, that's where the polish lands! Amazing! :D

It's a somewhat limited color range: three grey/silver-like colors (though not really, and I'll get more into that in a moment), a dark blue and a dark green. At first, I was disappointed in the fact that it seemed so monochromatic but after swatching them, I'm convinced that it's actually a very beautiful, subtle collection of shimmer and metallic colors.

Here are some swatches on me. I hope that I'll get some swatches of these on my SO up in the coming weeks. :)

BB Couture For Men Grenade

Dark olive grey, chock full of gold shimmer. This one was my pre-emptive favorite: I love green! And it's a gorgeous color, a deeper, richer green than OPI At Your Quebec and Call, and far more glossy, shimmering and multidimensional than Quirius Cresskill Eve. It's a very elegant, dignified shade even if it's not a traditional polish color (or marketed for women). Two coats was enough for pure perfection. But it wasn't my favorite, suprisingly enough! Not even my second favorite.

BB Couture For Men 45 Caliber

Not quite gunmetal grey, as I would imagine a gun-named color would be (or maybe 45 Calibers look like this? I wouldn't know since I don't know anything about guns). Instead, it's a light metallic silver that does retain evidence of brushstrokes (but unlike others, I actually kind of like the look of brushstrokes). I was "eh" on this one, mostly because I'm picky with my silvers. Still, this was opaque in two coats and very easy to apply.

BB Couture For Men Blue Steel

My absolute favorite from the collex. The name suggests a blue sheen to it -- and this photo is misleading because it was taken in early morning light which gives it an orange tinge -- but to me, this was the color of oiled, oxidized steel. It's a metallic black that has a silver sheen and is SO beyond gorgeous. Because it's so glossy and metallic, it catches the other colors that surround it in photos and reflects them. It was so hard for me to get a good pic of this one! I'll do an NOTD of it and try to get more pics of it someday. An incredibly sexy color.

BB Couture For Men Blue Steel with Essie Matte About You topcoat

Unlike ManGlaze The Death Tar, which has a lot of silver shimmer in its black matte, when Blue Steel is mattefied, it still reflects silver but it's not a silver shimmer nor the speckled look that mattefied shimmer polishes have. It looks like brushed black metal (which is something that I enjoy in furniture and, apparently, on nails).

BB Couture for Men Widow Maker

There's something really f'ing creepy about the name of this polish, what it's named after and the sentiment it represents, but this polish is a real beauty. When I saw it first next to 45 Caliber, I was like, "Man, why are there two boring silvers in here?" But when I put them on, it was obvious that they were VERY different. While 45 Caliber was a metallic silver, this is more of a taupe with silver microshimmer. It reminded me a lot of Orly Pixie Dust in its finish and luminance. I find it to be an understated, sophisticated color. Second favorite of the collection, officially nudging Grenade into the number three place. Sorry, Grenade.

BB Couture 45 Caliber on middle and pinky fingers

BB Couture Widow Maker on index and ring fingers

Again, my amateur photo skills diminish what it actually looks like in person but a side-by-side comparison might help people see why I actually think of these as very different polishes. I don't capture the difference in color here too well but the finishes are very distinct.

And last but not least...
BB Couture for Men Military Blues

A deep metallic blue. This was the smoothest polish in this collection, which is saying something. Very minimal brushstroking once the polish settles. It's such a rich, vibrant shade. I'm not at all a fan of metallic blues -- all other blues, yes; metallic blue, no -- but I liked this one a lot. I don't think it's anything incredibly special but it is a color that catches the eye. I should've done a matte tc with this one, too...! Oh well. :)

Obviously, this is a great collection for women but for any men out there who are curious about polish, this is a great way to get into it: the application is very easy (since most guys do have a lot less practice in polish application than many women) and these colors are stunning with very little effort. No glossy topcoat was used for any of these and yet they look highly shined and fine without. They are definitely "masculine" colors but if you need matte to be manly, that's nothing a little Essie Matte About You or Nubar V for Men won't cure!

As a feminist, I'm really overjoyed that it has become more widely acceptable for men to wear nail polish (check out a fabulous new blog by ybpolishboy!), even though people still seem to need to "butch it up" for the guys.

Women are still both professionally and socially penalized for not following typical gender roles... but what's nice is that some women are at least aware of this fact. Men are generally left in the dark, it seems, about the fact that they really aren't "allowed" to do things that women do. For instance, the facetious but insensible observation remains that women can wear pants but men can't wear skirts. Why not? And my facetious but sensible reaction remains: umm... isn't it better for men to wear skirts? True, really tight pants are no longer in style -- thank heavens -- but I imagine a little more freedom of *ahem* movement is not a bad thing for *ahem* the guys.

ANYWAY. Back to the new BB Couture Line. The only other polish line I know that is marketed as "for men" is the ManGlaze pair of matte polishes. That black and grey pair are called The Death Tar and Fuggen Ugly. Butch enough for you?

While the normal BB Couture line has a little paragraph on the bottle about how it's a basecoat, topcoat, nail color, nail strengthener in one, the squat square 0.5fl oz bottles (slightly smaller than the normal 0.6fl oz bottles) state simply:

SPECIALLY FORMULATED

JUST FOR MEN

With added natural strengtheners

Reminds me of a pair of nail clippers that I saw in a Sky Mall catalogue that was advertised as manly titanium nail shears, guaranteed to cut through even the toughest, manliest nail. ...I just keep telling myself that progress is gradual. Though I don't think I'll live to see the day that a pink nail polish will be found in "men's nail polish"...!

Before I wrap up, just a word to the shopping wise (or not, because without sales, I would have a lot more money in my bank account): SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTERS. If you must, create a separate email account just for newsletters. You will catch so many more sales that way. :D Or you can continue to read this blog, because I'm trying to pass on every sale that comes my way.

(Reminds me, AveYou, a good source for SpaRitual polishes, is also having a 10% entire purchase sale with the code AYPSS10. Expires August 22nd, 2009.)

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