Just because I think this video looks absolutely perfect.
Nicki Minaj looks how I imagine I look when I’m feeling most full of moxie and charm and badassness, and I never thought I’d see that vision of myself in a real person. Please don’t mistake me, I like how I look, but she’s a frothy warrior with a bigger budget than me and more tolerance for fake eyelashes.
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My friend Vivek started a Tumblr of fun wi-fi names you find when trying to get online. Go check it out and contribute!
This is an amazing article sent to me by Emily Gordon (yup, I know) about a new trend in Japan of divorce ceremonies.
As the rickshaws pulled up outside the building, Terai rushed inside to set up candles that provided the ceremony’s only light. He then led the couple, who have a 5-year-old son, behind a small table at the back of the room and commenced a bullet-pointed explanation of why the couple’s relationship faltered, information he gathered from separate interviews with them.
“Over the course of their marriage, the couple’s lifestyles began to diverge,” he began, straining to read in the dark. “They had different values, especially when a number of the husband’s hidden debts came to the surface.” Atsuko stared at the ground.
It’s such a fantastic idea, one that kiiiiinda sounds familiar, and perhaps this is my new calling…
Fox News decides to write about the new crop of sexy new “comediennes“, or about the sexy same old crop of actresses that sometimes do comedies. Ughsville.
Sent to me by Brian Baldinger just now:
Politics before safety, aka FUCK YOU TOPEKA KANSAS
In an absolutely stunning, shithead, chicken-playing move by the government in Kansas, they have voted to repeal the law against domestic battery.
Here’s the timeline:
- On September 8th, Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor announces he will stop prosecuting misdemeanors committed in Topeka, including domestic battery, because his office couldn’t afford to do it after county commissioners cut his budget by 10%. By refusing to prosecute those cases, the city attorney’s office would have to do it instead
- Interim City Manager Dan Stanley responds by saying the city was unprepared to prosecute these cases. Councilwoman Karen Hiller added that it would cost the city $800,000 a year to hire the staff and rent jail space for the new caseload, but only about $200,000 for the county to increase Taylor’s budget enough to resume prosecutions.
- After several iterations of the proposal drafted and discussed, the repeal of the illegality of domestic battery is brought to a vote, with Dan Stanley encouraging the governing body to approve it to send a message. That message? Only the district attorney’s office is legally empowered to prosecute domestic batteries committed in Topeka, and they can’t “dump” that responsibility on the city. (Yes, because wouldn’t that be so disrespectful to the city?)
- On October 11th, Topeka’s governing body voted 7-3 to repeal the part of city ordinance banning domestic battery in hopes that the DA office will re-evaluate how they prosecute this crime and decide that they can do it after all.
They keep insisting that this repeal doesn’t decriminalize domestic battery, as it remains a state law. One article I read stated that over 30 cases had been dropped since the start of this dispute, but since I didn’t see that anywhere else, I have no idea if that’s true. You can read more about this whole mess here and here.
What they don’t realize is that it doesn’t matter if they dismiss 0 or 100 cases as a result of this. What matters is that these assholes have chosen money over the respect and safety of women. Period. Chad? Dan? I don’t care if you don’t have the money to prosecute domestic violence cases- do it anyway. Do it for you moms, your sisters, your wives and your daughters. Do it because you respect women enough to not use them as a flashy bargaining tool. Do it because it’s the work we asked you to do by voting you in, you stupid fucking assholes. We don’t care about your petty budget problems. We care about women.
Here’s City Manager Dan Stanley’s phone number- 785-368-3725
And here’s District Attorney Chad Taylor’s- 785-233-8200 x4330
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An updated list of America’s most dangerous cities, courtesy of Forbes. What’s most interesting is their fairly PC analysis of why some cities are as dangerous as they are.
Nancy Upton talks about her experience with American Apparel, now that all the smoke has settled from her hilarious win of The Next Big Thing contest.
New Indoor Kids episode is out with Duncan Trussell! It’s maybe my favorite one ever.
Need a Halloween costume? Go as yourself with this creepy ass idea from a Japanese company- they’ll make a realistic, uncanny valley-worthy mask of your own face.
She’s got it.
I watch a lot of America’s Next Top Model, which is a reality show that attempts to break down what makes models models, using rules made by Tyra Banks that change constantly depending on her whims. It’s also an entertainment show, so there’s obviously more going on than just judging your posing ability. Girls stay on the show more if they’re “interesting” (read: crazy), and that makes sense to me. But there are interesting things to get out of the show about how we, as people, judge things like emoting with the eyes, posing in ways that show off clothes, and making you feel like a person in a photograph is looking directly at you.
But here’s something you can’t teach.
I’m not even a huge Kate Moss fan. I don’t really have any favorite supermodels, I guess, but when you watch this video of 19 year old Kate Moss, it is obvious that this girl can fucking bring it. The way she is looking at that camera is what all the ANTM contestants yearn for deep in their tiny souls, but smizing won’t help you here. Her eyes are telling you five hundred stories, and as I am not attracted to women sexually, instead of wanting her I instead want literally anything else she is promoting.
I guess that’s what makes a model super.
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Holy shit, Erin Hill‘s problem with Whitney and the crop of other “lady shows”, and her problem with being asked to support them because they’re lady-centered, is so spot-on I can’t stand it. I have nothing to add to it, I just want you to read it. A few choice quotes:
I don’t want to support retrograde pussy jokes or cheap, shock-value dead baby jokes just because a woman is saying them.
We have realized that we can both support women and hold individual women accountable at the same time. Sisterhood is powerful. I agree with that. But Sisterhood is not the same thing as a college Sorority, where once you’re in I have to pretend to like you. I don’t expect my sisters to love everything I do. I expect them to challenge me.
Yes yes yes.
This photo stream of people being terrified in a haunted house is full of treasures.
The poster for Diablo Cody’s new movie, Young Adult, is amazing, and the trailer isn’t so bad either!
Who was the standard of evil, pre-Hitler? Good question for Slate!
I can’t decide if Kumail would have loved or hated #4 on this list of alternate nerdy casting decisions that almost happened…
Home is where the Mac is.
I just read a thought-provokey article at The Guardian about how the Internet is redefining what home means to us. Now that we can set up shop in a murky netherspace, what does home mean?
What the web has inspired, then, is a postmodern understanding of what “home” is: a de-physicalised, conceptual and psychological phenomenon that externalises its invisible meanings.
And while I enjoyed the article, it didn’t address exactly what I thought it was aiming for- namely, how The Internet helps us feel at home even when we’re not. If you read Gynomite, you know that I’m a big believer in ritual- in assigning meaning to events or things in our lives in order to help us cope and thrive. I’m also a big believer in home. If I could, I’d stay at home forever and just have people come to me.
In the past two years, I’ve gone from traveling once or twice a year to traveling at least twice a month. I love it, but I only started loving it after I changed a few things-
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New Indoor Kids episode up today- this one with Tom Lennon!
I haven’t been paying so much attention to Occupy Wall Street in NYC, because I feel like they’re baiting the powers that be in order to them claim brutality, but this whole bridge thing is a bit odd….
Here are the worst “kids items” on menus in America, and surprise surprise, Cheesecake Factory tops the list with a dish that is 1800 calories.
As seen at Sociological Images, here are all the Playboy centerfolds of each decade superimposed on each other- notice how blonde they get over the years?
Meet Sesame Street’s newest denizen Lily. Lily doesn’t know where her next meal is coming from. She is food insecure.
Kumail and I were interviewed at Podcast Squared about The Indoor Kids- go give it a listen!
Yolanda Dominguez finished a genius art project where she had regular women pose like fashion models. Go check out the results here!
Here’s a quick video to show you how to escape from zipties, courtesy of TYWKIWDBI!
Sally has seven pairs of socks.
I sucked my thumb until I was way too old to be sucking my thumb. I only sucked the left thumb, and I only did it when I was going to sleep at night, but I loved it more than anything, and it took me years to stop. My parents tried gloves, replacements, and even painting my nail with this super spicy stuff, but the thing that ended up inspiring me to stop was me lying in bed at night thinking about a very buck-toothed girl in my class and telling myself that I’d end up like her if I didn’t stop.
Nothing like vanity to cure a bad habit.
Insider tip- if you were ever a thumbsucker, getting a labret piercing can be very dangerous for you. I thought I’d gotten over needing the comfort of sucking on something as I drifted off to sleep, but holy shit I was not over it. Plus a piercing makes you seem way tougher than sucking your thumb. Getting to sleep after I took that thing out of my face was nearly impossible.
The point of me telling you this is that my thumb sucking gave me what the experts call a “tongue thrust”, but what is more commonly known as a lisp. Elementary school Emily had a problem saying “S”, and because of that, elementary school Emily had to go to speech therapy.
