Sunday, January 7, 2001
Flak
This is your quilt on drugs: Man, this cracks me up. Old people on pot and their kids may not approve...
"James Simons, a 73 year old retired shoe repair man and his wife Flo quit their Wednesday afternoon golf club because "the only joints those people talked about were their knees."

This one's in for this quote: "Nobody thought those were real testicles in (There's) Something About Mary. Nobody thought that somebody really shot semen in (Cameron Diaz's) hair. But they all know that Divine really ate dog shit, so I'm sorry, I still feel like Muhammad Ali."

And the Obligatory Sex Column.

Then there's another good example of weblog work on Airtoons. I just had to point out my dirty favorites: condoms for airflight quickies, dryhumping, your "happy copilot", pull until penis turns orange and (not as dirty, but still amused me) Slashdot.

Sunday, January 7, 2001
The Ad Graveyard
My favorites: Vibrating cell phones, "It would have been a killer campaign!" and the last bike rider to get an erection.

Sunday, January 7, 2001
Reason
A few articles selected from here (more to come later):

What My Children Learned From South Park and Burning Man, which is not only accurate but has this funny bit:
"After that cease-and-desist order, the Portland contingent turned its energy to pranking the festival itself, staging a bogus "Larry Harvey" book signing in center camp. One of their number donned a fedora and stuck a cigarette in his mouth--Harvey's signature accessories--and sat on a couch on the mobile living room art car. Supplicants were forced to kneel at gunpoint before "Larry" as he signed cheap, thrift-store paperbacks with xeroxed cover stickers identifying the book as Mein Camp, by Larry Harvey. "Do not touch Mr. Harvey, do not speak to Mr. Harvey, do not look at Mr. Harvey," a gunman shouted through a megaphone. "Move along."

Sunday, January 7, 2001
Bizarre Stuff
(and perhaps a bit unsafe) to do at home.

Sunday, January 7, 2001
Click Mazes
You can figure it out.

Sunday, January 7, 2001
Nobody'll buy this Harry Potter book
No shit, Sherlocks-- who's going to pay $75-100 for a children's book?

Sunday, January 7, 2001
Why Shaggy HAD to be a vegetarian
Sheesh, Casey.

Sunday, January 7, 2001
The Joys of Singing Fish
I have to put this up: I first heard of the infamous "Big Mouth Billy Bass" and his ilk when my parents and I were going to Montana. And my mother, normally the prim and proper sort, kept wanting to pull in to every mart-ish store looking for this thing. She finally found one and got great glee from listening to it sing "Take me to the river." I seriously considered buying her one for Christmas, but Dad would have killed me. (Do I sound like an example of this woman's or what?) Never saw the other singing fish/gopher, though. Wouldn't you expect Dumbya to have one?

You can also look here to find out how they work and a few other links, such as how to hack a fish.

Sunday, January 7, 2001
Cow Parade
This is my calendar for the year. It's a hoot.

Sunday, January 7, 2001
The Adventures of Captain Cyborg
What appears to be a list of the whole collection is here, but my personal favorite is this one. Call me crazy, but hey, if a guy could read a woman's mind...

Sunday, January 7, 2001
Duck Planet
Rubber duckie, you're the one...

Sunday, January 7, 2001
Love is like OCD
It figures.

Sunday, January 7, 2001
The Office Assistant
You always knew that paper clip would drive someone to suicide someday....

Sunday, January 7, 2001
Bricktannia
A Lego town! Which reminds me: Friday night my roommate's frat boy buddies came over and were playing with my Lego collection, and somebody came up with a Lego strip club. It's really hilarious. Has lights, has a pole and a girl with her Lego leg sorta wrapped around it (ok, so she's probably kicking the pole, but still ;), has a cat walk with the Lego cat on it, and a guy sitting at the end having Obi-Wan Kenobi Legoman shaking his butt in his face. I can envision it now: Lego Kinktown.

Sunday, January 7, 2001
Things not to do on a unicycle
Ironically, I've interviewed one person pictured/mentioned on this page and watched another perform (we like weird bike-type things in this town). Neither of them are in the really embarassing shots, but perhaps they should stay anonymous, just in case.

Sunday, January 7, 2001
Tetrachromats
Here's a new one for ya: certain rare women that have color vision based on four channels instead of three.

Thursday, January 4, 2001
"The WORST year ever!"
I normally don't give a crap about Oscar-nomination predictions (it's all pie in the sky until the actual nominations come out), but I was amused by this line: "Inevitably, accompanying this process is the annual chorus that this was the worst year ever for movies. (It seems that every decade, there are at least nine "worst years ever for movies.")" Good point. Ditto Christmas sales. I'm so sick of that one alone.

Thursday, January 4, 2001
Assholes 2000
You have to read this.

...portajohn that was annihilated during the night when someone stuffed a flaming discarded Christmas tree inside it. All that remains is a mass of blue, smelly plastic that coats the ground like a dead Schmoo, bits of pine flecking the goo like ice-cream sprinkles, and a stench emanating from the pile that's so singular it makes my housemates and me wish there were a way to photograph smell."

Thursday, January 4, 2001
Creepy poly guys
In a way, this is another one to add to my collection of "Why Personals Can Really Suck Ass." "I don't know what possesses these men to email girls at random and ask if we're interested in "playmates" in the first place. they come at us as though we'd even be interested. and they have NOTHING to say that's of any interest. only ONCE has a random guy captured my attention over email, and it's because he was looking through my site, and emailed me commenting on it. he showed that he had a brain in his head, and that's DAMN sexy. but email me and act like i'm some new conquest, and i'm gonna laugh at you.
i've posted a number of online personals ads which stated specifically that i was looking for girls ONLY, and no couples, and who do you think the majority of my responses came from? single men. wtf? here's a quarter, honey, go buy yourself a clue. i got this totally creepy vibe from all of them, too."

Thursday, January 4, 2001
We don't need no stinkin' education...
A.k.a. most dropouts can probably write better than those in the D.C. school system. Bwahahahahahahahah!

Thursday, January 4, 2001
Has Star Wars mania gone too far?
At least, that's the only explanation I can come up with for making action figures of the actors playing the characters instead of the characters...Really, folks, who knew Ray Park was so cute out of Darth Maul makeup? Or that Peter Mayhew was such a slouchy slacker under that fur? (Still hairy, though.) Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) looks about like I'd expect him to under the metal. Somehow I have a hard time imagining how people would play with such action figures, though..."I'm going to head to the set now?" Oh, I forgot, you'd never "play" with collectibles that'll end up being worth a lot someday *sigh*

And on another note, for your amusement, here's Boba Fett presumably dancing with an umbrella. Seriously.

And another: Find Your Star Wars Twin.

Thursday, January 4, 2001
Ouch.
What kind of lame shit is this that people can now fire someone without EVER mentioning it to them? This is outright ludicrous- her cell stops working, she can't log on to the system, she can't get in the door, and when she asks if they're ever going to tell her, the guy thinks someone leaked the information?!? Man, am I glad I've spent the dotcom years in college before I got sucked into this.

Thursday, January 4, 2001
The Infamous "Friendly Backrub" Controversy
Dan Savage is SO right on about the above behavior of a guy in this situation. He's especially right on about the situation this puts us "nice girls" in when they say this. "Who me, asking for sex here? Nah!"

I also enjoyed the followup column, in which a fella said "it's jackasses like you who cause many women to refuse friendly back rubs from the rest of us." No kidding- we've all been in Dan's big fan's shoes at some point, and you eventually learn they expect something for this biiiiig "friendly favor" enough of the time that you have to cut that off with everyone but trusted sources.

Thursday, January 4, 2001
Nothing happened last week
There's really no particular reason to link to this- not a huge load of scandal and whatnot- other than I SO sympathize after working in the media for the last two weeks over Christmas vacation: "Dog Bites, having tried to write columns at this time of year before, knows perfectly well it's almost impossible to get anyone on the phone between Christmas and New Year's." And that, y'all, is why this weblog exists in its current form :P

Thursday, January 4, 2001
Playing With The Boys
One star baseball-playing girl and how nasty sexual harassers ruined the game for her. Why on earth do women always (or so it seems) have to be harassed sexually for whatever they do? This made me so mad...

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
Saving it for marriage
An analysis of virginity pledges and how well they work. And here's another. I have to admit that even I am astonished that virginity pledges are only 18 months more effective, so to speak.

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
Oooh! I made it into a weblog!
If you scroll down to the bit about Xeney and "me and my vagina going for a walk," then notice the "Some days, being a girl SUCKS" thread bit, that was me. I started the thread, my quote. I'm so proud of meself. =) Nice to know someone feels similarly.

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
The crediting question at GirlHacker
Scroll down to November 24 and you'll find: "Just had my first weblogger emotional reaction to what I thought was unattributed paraphrasing of something I wrote. So I pose you this question: how do you feel when you hear/read someone say/write something that you're pretty sure you said/wrote first, but it gets attributed to the direct source, not the original source? This goes on all the time in the news media and just plain ol' conversation. I had a bad reaction to seeing something I had posted repeated and not attributed to me, since I was sure that I was the original source. I believe that I should get over this because it is a natural course of events that information gets passed along, and it is the information that is important, not who found it first. However, if it is an original thought, idea, or theory that I know was mine first, then I think I have the right to be upset." and felt rather confused.

I've been a bit baffled at seeing certain weblogs mention a link and go on about it a bit, then say they found the link at another weblog and name that log. I'm honestly not sure why they do that, or if it's supposed to be an accepted thing to credit where you found a link. Now if someone said something profound and interesting about the links and I think this should be passed on, I'm happy to credit them. I work in journalism, so I'm not completely unaware of the need to credit. But so far when I've found links that probably came from a weblog, I haven't credited them. Truth be told, I go around looking up stuff a hell of a lot, and quickly bookmark sites and continue to click around through the main site, archives, etc, click on links from there, possibly leave for a few hours... Basically, by the time I get around to logging, I've definitely forgotten where I stumbled across the link, or if it was found in a log at all. And it doesn't seem that important to me to credit a link to a weblog, specifically because it's not an original idea of the logger. I could have found that page by looking through its main site, or a log, or through Yahoo, or wherever. Is that so wrong to not credit this?

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
The Oddness of Oz
I've never read the Oz books, but after reading this, I kind of want to. The main focus is on the strong feminine influences in the books.

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
The Future of Sex
Makes some good points.

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
(Yes, I like Kevin Smith flicks. So sue me.) If you scroll down a bit here, you'll find that the above-titled flick may come out in 2001, and "most reports agree" (whatever that means) that the flick will tie up the loose ends from the other four movies in the "series." Presumably, some of the actors in more than one movie could have more than one role in this one. Very interesting.

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
The 3rd WWWave
Really well-written young feminist site. There's so many articles I want to point out on topics like: gender roles, catcalling ("A dog that pisses on a fire hydrant to mark its territory for the other neighborhood strays isn't complimenting the hydrant."), why the feminist ended up doing most of the housework after all, motherhood, cars,abortion (this one in particular I agreed with), and bisexuality, which featured a hilarious but accurate paragraph on why us straight chicks sometimes consider switching sides:

"I can't stand the way that marriage has been created, I hate being expected to do all the housework and praise Junior's most cursory efforts to pick up his socks once in a while. I hate being expected to do all the gross jobs around the house because the Superior Being can't handle sticking his hand in a garbage disposal, and still having to fawn and act like it's the Second Coming when he picks up a dish. ("Look what I did, Mommy!") I have no clue why so many men think the toilet-seat-question is a joke when it's transparently obvious to me that making someone sit in your piss is a pretty grave insult. I can't stand it that my career still takes a back seat to his, and moreover that I'm expected to give it up, whereas if he makes even the most insignificant of sacrifices, he's lauded to the skies as "a sensitive 90's guy." I hate it to the point that I'm seriously considering just not getting married because I don't feel like wasting my time trying to explain all this to an adult who should know it already."

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
Weblogs: a history and perspective
For those who wondered what they're all about.

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
Female Detective.com
About what it sounds like: reviews of novels featuring female detectives.

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
Screenshot
Wow, what a cool weblog. I had to force myself to stop looking at the archives while at work.

My favorites (I find the one-issue-a-day format she uses sometimes to work really well) feature a discussion of Katharina's final speech in Taming of the Shrew, women in science being undervalued, and telemarketing (and I love her link on turning the tables).

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
The Brunching Shuttlecocks on EverQuest
I've lost several friends to this dreaded game, and I cannot imagine how they still manage to not be kicked out of school when they play it all night, every night (and in one person's case, all day, every day as well). I've pondered taking up the game at times just so I could talk to them again (I suspect my worth as a person has gone down for them because I have no idea what they're ever talking about) since most have eschewed other forms of communication than messaging to others playing the game, but then realized that I, unlike them, have a lot of homework and would thus never graduate. That and this description kinda takes the enticement away from me: "But I can at least put myself into the shoes of an adventurer, righting wrongs and fighting evil?" "Sort of. The evil in question reappears in the world after you vanquish it, often within mere minutes. and the world as a whole never changes because of anything you do. So in that way it's less like being a fantasy adventurer and more like being a social worker."

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
Extroverted like me
One guy's fairly disturbing experience with taking Paxil for his shyness. Not only does this doctor seem a little, um, crooked ("Eh, we won't check him out with a shrink to see if this is a good idea. He wants to try drugs, I'll hand him drugs. Who cares?"), going on and off the drug sounds horrible and it didn't seem to make him social unless alcohol was involved. Weird.

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
Real life Ice Castles
I'm still baffled as to why anyone would pay at least $80 to freeze all night.

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
How Columbine has affected the police department
Really pretty sad about how they're changing their training to be along the lines of "Just go chase them and shoot them down- they're going to shoot the hostages anyway." At any rate, it's sad that this has become necessary. "The traditional police response was designed for dealing with trapped bank robbers, angry husbands, or disgruntled employees -- not with disaffected teenagers running through a school killing as many people as possible."

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
Social and Cultural Aspects of Drinking
Since my New Year's consisted of a large amount of drunk, puking, passed-out 20-year-olds, this (very, very large- I haven't read the whole thing even yet) link seemed more interesting to me.

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
How to Self-Publish a Book and Turn It Into a Bestseller
Useful info.

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
We partied with a movie star!
"I don't want to brag, but Sharon Stone was at ours, as she is married to our editor. I think she was pretty dazzled at getting to meet real journalists and see how much free shrimp they can eat without pausing for air and how many chocolate cookies can fit into the inside pocket of a blazer. We, of course, were not dazzled at all to see a movie star -- several hundred of us just happened to be going in the direction she was at any given time."

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
Cattiness for Men
Stephanie Salter kicks ass. While making a point that I personally agree with, she also gets to make hilarious remarks like "Stick a pin in him and watch the formaldehyde flow." On a similar note, there's this article and this one.

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
Duh.
Here's a nice collection of stuff I call "This is supposed to be news?" The headliner article is ostensibly a list of advice for Bush. But if you read it...well, good lord. I have had no direct involvement in politics since being secretary of the fourth grade for a week (my last runoff election :P), and yet I could have figured out all of this advice on my own. Find out what the government does? Read fine print? People come through the White House on tours? DUHHHHHHH!

Interesting um, choices of advice there, Ms. Thomas. Did you choose those because you think he has no clue on his own to figure out any of it (i.e. don't cause stupid scandals)? Not that he probably can't use that advice (assuming he ever reads it), but I think I'm frightened.

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
Best and Worst of the Year
Molly Ivins rocks.

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
What Women Want 10-Minute Review
I'm not posting this for the movie (which I haven't seen and don't intend to see), but for the Helen Hunt/Charlize Theron girlfriend burnout lines. The man's right on, and them girls bug me too.

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
Shut up about our diets, already!
I'm just completely amused at a line like "The more negative and confused people feel about dietary recommendations, the more likely they are to eat a fat-laden diet that skimps on fruits and vegetables."

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
Madder Music, Stronger Wine
Brilliant.

"Marriage is a tremendous peril for women. And so we’ve spent these past two decades fleeing in underground tunnels, only to find that there is no such thing as freedom, because we can’t survive without love, and it’s often love we’ve cheated ourselves out of.

"When I asked my friend Greg how his romance was progressing, he replied, “Great. I haven’t called her twice, and she hasn’t called me twice.” "But then the chess game began. Should she send him an e-mail [after sex], or would that seem too desperate? By that she meant, would he get the impression that she liked him, in which case he would almost certainly have to withdraw his affection. Well, bombs away, she sent an e-mail. He responded mysteriously, with all the words of withholding. “Busy,” “I value our friendship,” and so on. Then she ran into him at a bar. She called me frantic the next morning and said, “I was a little drunk and I think I really overstepped the lines. I lost control.”
“What did you say?” I asked her.
“I just walked up to him and said, ‘I like you.’”
I burst out laughing. “That’s all you said? That’s adorable. That’s fantastic that you said that.”
She didn’t hear from him after that, and about a week later she sent him an e-mail apologizing for this transgression, this outburst of emotion."

"I read an advice column in a woman’s magazine recently where a woman wrote in with the emotional equivalent of a 911 emergency call. “Help! I was drunk one night and I left a message for this guy I’d been seeing and at the end of it I said, ‘I love you.’ I can’t take it back, and I haven’t heard from him since. What should I do?” The advice was to make it seem casual — to make a point out of demonstrating that you say “I love you” all over the place, to friends, to bus drivers. In other words: Deplete the words of their meaning, immediately." It's all somehow reminding me of the Rules again.

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
Scrappy Band of Loveable Misfits No Match for Rich Kids
Finally quitting with the Salon links for the night (surprisingly, no, I don't link half their sites every day)...I could quote the whole damn article, but here's the more surprising bits: "We stole a bunch of the girls' panties--so what?" Doofus said. "Did we think the symbolic humiliation of losing their underwear would make them forget they have a crack team of lawyers and powerful family connections in New York law-enforcement circles? Sure, we put a lot of effort into that panty raid, but all it got us was a sexual-harassment suit and $17,000 in fines for breaking and entering."

"We were all laughing and giving each other high-fives, like we actually accomplished something," said Hackmeister, currently being held in federal prison for multiple violations of state and federal anti-hacking statutes. "The feds showed up at my cabin the very next morning with, like, 12 subpoenas."

"When Breckenridge's blue-blood camp director Mr. Harding--who we all called 'Mr. Hard-On'--came running out with the eviction papers, we set off a carefully orchestrated booby trap that sent him tumbling into the lake," Half-Pint said. "Then we all laughed and cheered and partied, like we'd somehow defeated him. Meanwhile, Harding just drove back to his lawyer's office and got new copies of the papers. Duh. You obviously can't nullify litigation just by getting somebody wet."

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
Hello, I'm a dumbass
Also known as, "Why those Benetton prison ads were a bad idea." Can this story GET any more pathetic?

Hmmm, I seem to be channeling Chandler this evening...

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
DotComGuy leaves the house...
and the media yawns.

Note that he's (a) changing his name back to normal and (b) engaged to some chick he met off the DotComGuy chat room. Can you BE more predictable?

Update, 1/3: After finding this article, I feel a little more sorry for DCG. The site lost a good chunk of its financial backing and he had to forfeit his salary. Man, to spend a whole year locked in a house and not even get paid for it.

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
Groups to fight Ashcroft nomination
"The most important question is "whether Ashcroft will enforce laws that "he's acknowledged publicly he disagrees with,"said Daschle, appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America."The Democratic senator cited laws on women's rights and civil rights."

Actually, this article is even better. "George W. Bush constantly assured us during the election that he was a new breed of Republican -- a "compassionate conservative." (Bullshit!) He promised to reach across party lines to work with Democrats, just as he had in Texas.... And with a large percentage of Americans unconvinced of the legitimacy of his election, it seemed quite possible that Bush would reach across the aisle. He did -- but only to flip Democrats the bird...Bush blithely turned to his party's far right wing for two of his most critical Cabinet appointments, nominating Bible-thumping, pro-gun, anti-abortion, Confederacy-praising Sen. John Ashcroft as attorney general and pro-growth, pro-oil, anti-regulation Gale Norton to head Interior."

What the hell are those Democrats thinking?!? (more likely, not thinking) The man's scary.

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
The 10 most disturbing trends in Hollywood
Right. Fucking. On.

Same here. (Don't you just love the title of this weblog?)

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
No more Bushes for Bush
I don't know how long this entry will stay up, so I'll copy the best of it. One Emily Hofstetter has enacted via e-mail a new protest: shave your personal bush in protest against Bush and send the hair to his inaguration, or just throw it at him if you attend (she'll be attending). The e-mail reportedly has lines like "Women are probably going to be the most affected by this recent faux-lection. Whythen don't we do something that will at least show our disapproval for the recent decision. The way I see it: ONE CLOSE SHAVE DESERVES ANOTHER!" and "I am prepared to stay completely shaved for four years. You think that Bush is the name of our president? I say that Bush is something that I have between my legs and I can get rid of it if I want to." While this um, form of protest sounds er, useless at best, I'm totally amused at the idea of flying pubic hair.

Tuesday, January 2, 2001
The scarlet number
I don't know why, but I am fascinated by the women of the older generations, the ones who once upon a time (or now, still) would sleep with whoever they felt like without a lot of worry beyond birth control. The ones who missed the brainwashing of sex ed in the 90's (i.e. DON'T HAVE ANY, EVER). This woman's shocked at two to six, I can't imagine sleeping with "between 80 and infinity." I keep wondering how many STD's they've had and other depressing things like that.

I'm pretty damn disgusted at the whole Rules Girl/reborn virgin phenomenon. I'm not going to plan my life out waiting for some imaginary future husband that I don't think even exists (I keep picturing me sitting around in the Chastity Closet when I'm forty-five), and it seems pretty stupid to me in some ways for others to do that. Marriage isn't a guarantee for anyone's future, and the fact that you stayed "pure" isn't one either.

"But what really offended was the idea that somehow, by making all these right and careful choices, you could avoid disaster, you could protect yourself from hurt -- and you could blossom forth from hormone-crazed teen to white-shrouded bride with hymen intact, ego unbruised and no psychic scars.

A corollary to this theory, of course, is the well-worn cliché that within every man there lurks a grown-up frat boy, a sex-crazed sociopath who will promise anything to get what he wants. Thus, as they would see it, women have no choice but to quash their desires and grimly navigate through the dating rapids without getting wet on their way to the altar. And if you weren't lucky enough to get the message before a sweaty roll or two, then you'd better recant with the zealotry of a convert."

Doesn't work.