The ShanMonster, aka Shantell Powell only has one life to live, so she does her best to fill it up with absolutely everything which interests her. She has whims of steel. She's some sort of crazy art jock, because she's an erstwhile DJ, multi-disciplinary artist, costume designer, dancer, writer, web designer, lover of boots, martial artist (goju ryu karate-do, Wu Ta-ch'i, Hung Gar kung fu, Northern Praying Mantis (martial art), and a wee spot of Wing Chun, Choy Lee Fut, and European-style fencing), long-distance bicyclist, fitness instructor, actor, gym monkey, model (figure, photo, and fashion), metal artist, weaver, scholar, tamer of pigeons, and chinchilla breeder (she didn't breed them personally; they took care of that themselves). She's also managed a comic/game shop, worked with horses, raised champion (and not so champion) dairy goats, been a botanic illustrator, camp counsellor, stage actor, art gallery attendant, theatre sound tech., public relations maven, reservations agent, and landscape gardener, and also helped organize a protest. She likes to keep herself busy.
Her passions are for the beauty and potential of human and animal movement. She wants to know how to bound about like a squirrel, swivel her head like a pigeon, do grand leaps like an antelope, sinuate like a serpent, and scale walls like Jackie Chan. In the meantime, she suffices with walking from one room to another without stubbing her toe and by practicing her dance and martial arts. The irony is that throughout her school years, she hated physical education, and did her best to disappear during gym class. Of course, that probably had more to do with the instructors and other students than anything else. She went to some bad schools.
Shantell studied metal arts and jewellery design at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design and worked primarily with sterling silver. She currently teaches dance at several studios in Kitchener, Ontario.
She left the craft school to pursue her studies in movement arts. Shantell teaches Belly dance and tribal fusion dance, is a tribal fusion, North American cabaret, and experimental dancer, and she also sells her self-published dance costuming books. To top it all off, she maintains http://community.livejournal.com/canadaraqs/ and is a co-moderator at http://community.livejournal.com/bellydancing/ .
Shantell is a compulsive chronicler. She is compelled to write down her experiences, both to share with others and to maintain a backup for her own faulty memory. If she can't remember something on her own, at least her writings can serve as a remembrance.
Her brain works in mysterious ways. She has synaesthesia. She often see sounds, and some cause her physical pain. She interprets pain in strange ways. Some wrist locks which would leave anyone else screaming in agony don't register as pain at all. And sometimes when she get injured, it feels like that body part is going to vomit (her knees, for instance, will experience nausea). She lives with ever-present visual hallucinations due to migraine status aura. She sees what look like strobe lights, flickering puddles of oil, and wires and ropes shooting out at me. She knows they're not real, but that doesn't keep her from jumping away from them, from time to time.
She has illogical phobias ofAstroboy and anthropomorphic potatos.
Shantell is extremely interested in stories, whether they be new (modern cinema) or ancient (mythology). She'd love to have worked on a degree in folkloric studies, but such a programme isn't offered anywhere she can afford. So she did the next best thing and graduated with a double major in English (drama) and Classics (civilization) and a minor in Fine Arts (creative writing). It only goes to follow that Shantell enjoys role-playing games, too: games focusing on story rather than dice-rolling.
She is also an ex-Jehovah's Witness (JW), which means if you're a JW, you could be disfellowshipped for reading her apostasy-ridden stuff. Well, technically speaking, she was never actually a JW, because she didn't ever get baptized, but still, over twenty years indoctrination counts for something. Shantell was a fourth-generation JW, with roots going back in my family to before JWs were even called JWs. Anyhow, she is now completely out of that nasty sect, and so are her sister and grandmother. Her parents are still firmly mired in the misogynistic, elitist, Leave It to Beaver Land that is JWs. She can't imagine them leaving any time soon.
The ShanMonster's home on the web can be located at http://www.shanmonster.com
She has been cited in several Wikipedia articles, most notably on Belly dance, Witch trial, torture, and Goth subculture.