Top six (verifiable) monsters in order of righteousness:
1. Werewolves
2. Black Lagoon creatures
3. Mummies/Frankensteins (tie)
5. Chupacabra
6. Draculas (AKA los Vampiros)
That is all.
[Cross-posted.]
It's A Fact!
The Little Things
So, funny thing about the Pacific Northwest--air conditioning isn't a standard home feature. We discovered this our first summer out here when it became hot enough to warrant turning on the a/c and...there's no a/c. LOL! So when it gets ridiculously, 100-degree hot as it does every now and then, we go out to eat for dinner. We did so not long ago and the restaurant we went to gave us kid coloring pages (not unusual). That were gender-oriented (unusual):
Oh but they get better on their reverse side.
Word searches:
The "boys" page had a maze ("get to the treasure"), a "one of these things is not like the other" puzzler (of pirate ships), and a connect the dot of a parrot. The "girls" had a maze ("get the shoe to the shopping bag"), a "one of these things..." (purses), and a word scramble:
So when you're all grown up, you can get--or give--cards like this*:
(Says: "Hmmm...I'm not sure what the heck it is. ...And you say you've seen mom pushing it around?")
* (Sorry for the poor quality on this one, I took it at the store with my phone)
Quote of the Day
"So-called women's issues are stability issues, security issues, equity issues. The World Bank and many other analyses have proved over and over again that where women are mistreated, where they are denied equal rights, you will find instability that very often serves as an incubator of extremism."—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a great interview in the New York Times about the "gender agenda" of the Obama administration's State Department under her leadership.
I just need to note that this was part of an answer to the following question: "I've been at more than a few women's events with you overseas where the men in the audience drift off to their BlackBerrys or into a snooze after a few minutes. How do you change the mind-set, not just overseas but at home and in this building, that tends to view women's issues as a pink ghetto?" Emphasis mine.
[H/T to Ann.]
Hungry?
Get some Cap'n Sig™ fish and cheese bites! Available wherever fish and cheese bites are sold. It's almost lunchtime, ain't it?
[Cross-posted.]
lolsoblolsoblolsob
So there's this dude, right? And he gets a cornea transplant. (Yay, organ donors! Yay, modern medicine!) And, after the transplant, he suddenly sees dirt and grime around the house he never saw before, so he starts helping out with the cleaning, which he'd previously been "happy to leave household chores to his partner Sarah Gadsby. However, since the father-of-three had a cornea transplant in March this year he has taken to doing the dusting and washing up and developed an aversion to grime he didn't have before."
Mr Palmer, a financial adviser, said: "Since having the transplant my vision is almost 20/20. I've can now notice every speck of dust and dirt and can't help but have a go at cleaning it up as I go along. Before my vision started to deteriorate my partner had to pester me into doing my bit around the house. Sarah always said I never did enough washing up and hoovering, but now I'm always at it."To what does he attribute this change? Well, it must have been a female cornea, of course!
"It started as a joke that I must have been given the cornea of a woman but I really do think it's true. There's a reason why men don't clean like this and I think it's because we just don't see the dirt, but I see it everywhere I go."And that's not because women are still socialized to see dirt and grime so they can be good housewives in 1952, nor because women are judged to living heaps of human failflesh if their homes aren't spotless, while men's filthy "bachelor pads" are just chuckle-inducing evidence of boys being boys, but because female corneas see dirt better.
I give up.
[H/T to Mr. Petulant, by email.]
Mean Unlovable Fatty
There have been a lot of responses to The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck, many of them quite moving and brilliant, posted at other blogs or arriving secretly, confessionally, in my inbox, almost exclusively by women. I read them and sometimes I cry and sometimes I laugh and sometimes I nod in recognition and sometimes I shake my head in disbelief.
And some of the responses have been less moving or brilliant than angry and threatening, and those have been authored exclusively by men, all of them engaging in one or more of the exact behaviors detailed in the post, without a trace of irony. Which, quite certainly contra their intentions, I find utterly hilarious.
But this, Shakers, has to be the best response of them all: Judging from your pic, you're fat, so of course men aren't going to have been as nice to you throughout your life. That resentment has led you to this moment.
LOL. Of course.
What The Hell?
Shaker Temeraire, left
What the hell is with the leather pants, En Esch? What the hell is with the little "beard"?? What the hell is with the nippletastic shirt??? What the hell????
[See also: Deeky, Liss, evilsciencechick, katecontinued, ClumsyKisses, Mistress Sparkletoes, Liiiz, Reedme, Mama Shakes, Mustang Bobby, RedSonja, MomTFH, Portly Dyke, SteffaB, Icca, Christina, Orangelion03, Car, Siobhan, InfamousQBert, Maud, Rikibeth, MishaRN, CLD, Cheezwiz, MamaCarrie, Temeraire, somebodyoranother, goldengirl, Liss (again), summerwing, yeomanpip, Susan811, bbl, Deeky (Part II), A Daily Shakesville Fan, Sami_J, and liberalandproud.]
Top Chef 6: Rise of the Tattooed
[Click to embiggen.]
Sorry I forgot to do the open thread for the premiere of the new season last night, Top Chefies. I promise I'll get back on track next Wednesday.
Below are spoilers for both the Top Chef 6 premiere and the finale of Top Chef Masters, so if you don't want to know anything, beware... Ditto for comments.
So, let's start with the finale of Top Chef Masters. In the first six episodes that determined the semi-finalists, every person who I wanted to win every week won. So I was feeling good about whoever won, although my favies were Anita Lo, Art Smith, Hubert Keller, and Rick Bayless.
Of them all, Hubert Keller is the chef whose food I'd most love to eat (I'll see you someday, Fleur de Lys!), and he truly tickles me as a person; I'd love to just sit and chat with him for hours. But there was, I admit, a particular soft spot in my heart for Rick Bayless, who is not only a terrific Chicago restaurateur, but someone who I've had the pleasure of meeting. And he is exactly as nice and generous and gentle and mellow as he seems. (His food is even better than it looks!) So I was quite genuinely thrilled that he won.
Recommended Eating: Rick Bayless' Frontera Grill and Topolobampo.
Now, as for Top Chef Las Vegas... I don't have much to say yet, although I'm really liking the winners of both the quickfire (Jennifer) and the elimination (Kevin) challenges right out of the box.
I could have done without the prancing showgirls. Sigh.
Good Morning!
Grab a cuppa and settle in for your first clusterfucktastrophe of the day!
There's so much to parse in this story, and about how it's being reported, that I don't even know where to begin. So I'm just going to open it up and let you all have at it. Good luck!
[H/T to everyone in the multiverse, and thanks to each and every one of you.]
Question of the Day
What smell commonly regarded as unpleasant do find appealing?
I seem to like a lot of smells most people find icky: Cigarettes, gasoline, the musty, stale, vaguely smoky smell that resides in vintage purses and on the pages of old books.
I also quite like the smell of horse and cow manure—the latter of which, I should note, I have never smelled on factory farms (where it may be unpleasant), only on family dairy farms, where the grassy, earthy smell of hay- and grass-fed animals' manure I find to be quite agreeable. They are also smells I associate, respectively, with horseback riding and with visiting the dairy farm of a family friend in Upstate New York, both activities I have long enjoyed, so the scents have a nostalgic element to them for me that certainly adds to their appeal.
Pig shit, on the other hand, I find absolutely intolerable.
I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means
Mmmm...mavericky!
He ran for president last year as a "maverick" Republican and had a high-profile meeting with Barack Obama after the election, but Arizona Sen. John McCain has been a staunch Republican vote since failing to win the White House.lol your imaginary independent streak.
In fact, McCain is siding with his party this year on closely divided votes with greater frequency than at any other period in his 23-year Senate career, according to a CQ analysis of Senate votes.
Bad News for Denver
Sisters of Charity get control of Exempla hospitals:
The long-disputed sale of Exempla Lutheran and Good Samaritan hospitals to the Kansas-based Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System has been settled, the parties announced today.This is one reason why genuine, comprehensive socialized healthcare would be nice, instead of just universal coverage.
The sale makes Sisters of Charity the sole owner of the hospitals and means the hospitals will follow Catholic medical directives — no abortions, tubal ligations, vasectomies or a range of other reproductive services now available at the nonsectarian Lutheran and Good Samaritan hospitals.
Even universal coverage isn't worth a damn if private hospitals won't provide the services you need.
[H/T to Shaker Nicole.]
Actual Poll
Currently running at Fauxgressive Central HuffPo, to which I'm not going to link, but it's easy enough to find if you're so inclined:
If you can't view the image, it reads: "Does Michelle Obama have the right to bare legs?" followed by three choices: 1. Absolutely! It's so modern. 2. No way. It's inappropriate for a First Lady. 3. It's not the end of the world, but maybe she should wear longer shorts next time.
For the record, here is an image of First Lady Michelle Obama wearing her controversial shorts while on a family holiday earlier this week:
ZOMG scandalous!!! She looks—gasp!—like pretty much every single middle-aged mom in summer clothes I've seen in my entire bleedin' life.
If you happen to be thinking, "You know, something about this strikes me as a little fucking misogynist and racist," give yourself 1,000 points—because the entire commentary surrounding whether Michelle Obama should be wearing shorts and at what length is just another infuriating iteration of the policing of female bodies of color, which is inevitably and inextricably associated with narratives about sexuality, sexual servitude, and economic class.
That's why, instead of taking a look at a picture like the one above and not even thinking twice about it, the HuffPo has to run a goddamned poll that might as well be substituted with a video of Andy Rooney pooping his pants and worriedly exclaiming: "I can hardly tell if that's the First Lady or a dirty, dirty whore soliciting smack for blowjobs on Santa Monica Boulevard!"
Trying to obfuscate that reality with polite-sounding horseshit like "It's inappropriate for a First Lady" and "Maybe she should wear longer shorts next time" is just wretched cowardice, a pitiful attempt to distance themselves from their tiresome policing of Michelle Obama's body.
[H/T to Shaker Kathy.]
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
Strip One, Strip Two, Strip Three, Strip Four, Strip Five, Strip Six, Strip Seven, Strip Eight, Strip Nine, Strip Ten. In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.
God Bless America
God bless America one nation under God freedom isn't free support our troops what would Jesus do a hard rain's a-gonna fall in case of rapture this car will be unmanned give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me this land is your land this land is my land it's not a choice it's a child America home of the brave land of the free. Hand painted ceramic. $75.00.
[Cross-posted.]
