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I HAVE BEEN SITTING HERE EXPECTANTLY WAITING FOR MY FRIEND AND WONDERING WHY SHE IS LATE

AND THEN I REALIZED THAT YOU ARE NOW IN A DIFFERENT TIME ZONE AND IT IS EIGHTEEN PAST FOUR.

So here is a video of an owl taking a bath. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bFmwp-p1Sc&feature=related

...that it's actually a behavior-changing parasite that is the cause behind slow diagonal walking across streets and parking lots.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16166134

Hairier skin may be the key to avoiding being bitten by bed bugs, claim Sheffield academics.

Hungry bugs placed on shaved arms were more likely to try to feed compared with those on unshaved arms, the journal Biology Letters reported.

Researchers say the hair slows down the bed bugs and warns the victim.

Pest controllers say the UK is currently experiencing a steep rise in the number of bed bug infestations.

Prof Michael Siva-Jothy, from Sheffield University's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, recruited 29 brave volunteers to test the theory further, watching the bedbugs as they found a place to feed and removing them only as they were about to bite.

He found that more layers of both longer visible hairs and finer, "vellus" hairs near the surface appeared to work as a deterrent to the insects, with the finer hairs also acting as an early warning system.


Prof Siva-Jothy said: "Our findings show that more body hairs mean better detection of parasites - the hairs have nerves attached to them and provide us with the ability to detect displacement."

He said they also slowed down the insect as it searched for a tasty spot to bite.

It feels like some serious crazy is about to bust loose. Like a tension is mounting. I can almost smell it, it's so close to tangible.

2012 is going to be an interesting year.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2071127/Bankers-1-615-word-email-woman-didnt-back.html

Wow. Just wow.

[honor]

There is something that has been bothering me for several years, and it has to do with the institution of marriage.

Now, I am no paragon of spousal perfection. I have been divorced three times. During my first marriage, I had an affair with an older married man. I can make no excuses.

Quite a long time ago, a friend of mine was dating a guy who, it turned out, was separated from his wife in Colorado. He had a young son with his wife, and was always struggling to send money to them. If you have seen a friend go through a divorce, you know how it goes; the bitterness, the resentment, the demonizing of the person once loved. It's a necessary phase for many people, because they must make their spouse seem, in their own minds, unlovable in order to make the parting of ways more bearable.

My friend, unsurprisingly, hated the wife, this woman she had never met or spoken to, with a burning passion. She resented everything about her, and would regale me with stories of how wicked, how manipulative, how exploitative, and how greedy this woman was. She would use words like "bitch" and "whore". In the end, when my friend's lover decided to move back to Colorado and reconcile with his wife, my friend was shocked and devastated, even though it was as obvious and predictable as water flowing downhill. The whole thing made me cringe, and in all the times I have seen this scenario repeat itself with other women, it always seems to go the same way. It still makes me cringe. Every. Fucking. Time.

Here's why.

Ladies, if you are fucking a married man, you need to keep in mind that HE IS MARRIED. He has a wife. They may be separated or in an open marriage or he may simply be cheating, but in any case, his wife is still his WIFE. It doesn't matter if she really is a manipulative bitch; she deserves your respect in the context of  their marriage simply by virtue of being in it. Perhaps she's psycho... or perhaps the stress of the fact that HER HUSBAND IS FUCKING OTHER WOMEN is taking a toll on her. The second you open your mouth to vilify her, you are revealing yourself to be nothing more than gutter trash. And for the love of all that's holy, think for one moment before calling her a whore or a slut, because... seriously... YOU ARE THE WHORE. You're fucking another woman's husband, and badmouthing her while you're at it. That's pretty much the trashiest that trash can get. You have, at that moment, crossed the line from being another innocent caught up in the wake of marital problems to being the psycho other woman.

Listen up. He's going to go back to her. They always do. If he has even a shred of actual honor, he will try as hard as he can to do right by his WIFE, the woman he married, and you have no part in that equation. Even if they end up divorced, you're still just a piece of rebound pussy and he's almost certainly double-dipping, either with the wifey or some other chick. If you want to salvage some small shred of dignity, don't pretend it's anything more than that, and keep in mind that every nasty thing that comes out of your mouth about your lover's wife is, actually, a more accurate description of yourself.

Also, he's an asshole.


Or kill me.

 

It appears to be a big mofuckin' bag of pure crazy: http://www.cesspoolofmadness.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w68qZ8JvBds

[The Most Vicious Letter You Never Wrote (Portland)]

YOU HAVE A COMPETITOR!

http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/wet/2730422863.html

The Most Vicious Letter You Never Wrote (Portland)
Date: 2011-12-01, 9:55AM PST
Reply to: serv-6czw2-2730422863@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Do you have the need (or just the wicked urge) to craft a letter or email with the most succinct, devastating invective ever seen? Something that will make jaws drop, tears spring to the eyes, hands go numb... and get RESULTS? I can make it happen. I am a skilled, articulate writer with years of experience in publication... and a particularly noteworthy flair for penning letters which are heart-stoppingly concise, emotionally resonant, and cut to the bone. (Without the use of expletives or even insults -- unless you wish for them.)

How is my skill useful to YOU?
-- Reactions to ruined love affairs and betrayals
-- Family disasters
-- Complaints about products or services which were unsatisfying
-- Work-related debacles
-- Political rage

Want a reaction? Want results? So overwhelmed with emotion that you're nearly apoplectic and cannot find the right words? You need me.

I can send you samples of my heavy-hitting, eloquently expressive, lucid invective. They won't know what hit 'em. Outline the details of your furious gripe, and I can turn it into art. Fee dependent on length and subject matter, but is usually roughly the equivalent of a reasonable ten-cents-per-word, or $30 per page. A highly satisfying bargain.

http://textsfrombennett.tumblr.com/

I always thought that the vodka-soaked tampon stories sounded like pure, uncut urban legend. "Kids will do some crazy things to catch a buzz!"

Apparently they will even defy biology. Those wacky kids!

The first tip-off that it's an urban legend is the "no alcohol breath" part of the story. As anyone who has ever smelled a drunk knows, it doesn't matter what orifice the alcohol goes into, it metabolizes out everywhere. If you got drunk up the ass enough to matter, people would be able to smell it on your breath just as much as if you drank a shot of vodka.

The second tip-off is that, as the author of the article illustrates, whoever came up with this idea has clearly limited experience with tampons. It's just not a practical method of delivery. Try jamming a handful of wet cotton balls up your ass and you'll see what I mean.

The whole thing reeks of teenage boys making shit up, and one brave woman decided to put it to the test:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/danielle-crittenden/vodka-tampons_b_1105433.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008

Conclusion on methodology: My experiment showed me that the soppy, unfurled tampon was the only way to go.

The Test

First I had to wring the damn thing out a little. I didn't want to lose too much of the vodka so I kind of shook it above the glass and gently squeezed it. I would estimate that about a half-ounce was lost. Then I looked at it a little despairingly. Well, friend, how were we going to do this?

I repaired to the bathroom and -- without too much information here -- managed to wad the thing up and push it in where it was supposed to go. (Did it help that I've had three kids? Possibly.) Girls, don't do this in your best party dresses: I think I lost another half-ounce in the process as it splattered on to my clothes and the floor. No need to say "Bottoms up!"

Reaction:

Oh sweet mother of Jeez----

Owwwwww.....

Absolut... firewater!!!!!!! Holy sheeeeeeeee...

It felt like someone had thrown a lit match in there. I began hopping around and breathing in the rapid, short puffs I'd learned in birth classes, so long ago, before I realized I didn't need to breathe like that if I took the epidural.

So, yesterday I made an offhand comment to some friends that I would really like my next boyfriend to be someone who has never visited a prostitute, but that I didn't know if that's an unreasonable hope. I observed that of all the men I've been in relationships with, all but one share the curious commonality of having told me they have been with prostitutes, usually while traveling abroad, with frequency ranging from a one-time experiment to a semi-regular habit.

Space Cowboy, who is easily the awesomest person I have ever been in a relationship with, is the only one who has never paid for sex.

Curiously, my male friends, for the most part, reacted as if I had said the most reasonable thing in the world, and several commented that they didn't even know anyone who had been to a prostitute. Two of my female friends, however, challenged my reasoning, so I said that while I don't think prostitution is wrong, I think that there is a lot wrong with prostitution, and that other than, say, a youthful one-time visit out of curiosity, I don't think paying women for sex as a commodity is consistent with a feminist worldview or with my expectations of a partner.

SHIT STORM. They are acting like I am being TOTALLY unreasonable, discriminatory, and (bizarrely enough) anti-feminist.

What sayeth the peedee on this matter?

NSFW. But wow.
http://tinyurl.com/876p9ct

I really, really, have reached my last straw with having the fucking plaintive Oliver Twist visage of Jimmy Wales looking at me every time I go to Wikipedia. It's making me start to AVOID THE SHIT out of Wikipedia, which is too bad because it's actually a useful resource.

So.

http://www.change.org/petitions/jimmy-wales-founder-of-wikipedia-replace-the-image-of-jimmy-wales-with-that-of-a-golden-retriever#

Can anyone make a big-eye version of the Jimmy Wales pics? The large, dewy, slightly weepy eyes of Wikipedia's founder need to haunt the soul of the internet. Fucking please. Like it could get any worse.

Last time it was a naked girl inside the warm, bloody abdominal cavity of a freshly-gutted horse. This time:

http://www.kval.com/news/local/Duck-fan-makes-giant-O-out-of-leaves-134188383.html

This, my friends, is a snapshot of the state in which I live.

This is like 12 years old at this point, but well worth a reread. One of the most deliciously over-the-top (yet believable) trolls I've ever seen.

http://doodiepants.com/2009/12/09/the-legend-of-the-mall-ninja-gecko45/

GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT GOTTA SNAP OUT OF IT

I lay the razor down on the edge of the sink next to the hairbrush full of a matted tangle of red hair, and turned to the bathroom door which was, of course, not his bathroom door. He left eight months ago and everything still reminds me of him, every breath, every fallen leaf, every hipster asshole who hits on me at the bars I go to in an attempt to make myself forget, distract me, find a replacement that can never be found. It's been weeks since I last had a proper meal and my ribs and cheekbones stand out raw and sharp as knives. I know that there's a fierceness and a sadness about me now that draws only the crazy ones, only the ones who hope that somehow I am either strong enough to lead them or weak enough to be taken advantage of. I am the crazy mommy that the damaged little boys flock to, trying to repair their own old wounds. But I don't have any healing in me, and what once would have been maternal sympathy is now reduced to nothing more than tolerant contempt, except for when it's not tolerant and my revulsion slips through and scalds them.

I look like an easy mark, and I know it. Freckled and sullen-eyed, at five foot three I look more like a sulky girl than a forty-year-old mother, especially in the dim light of the bar. And so they approach me, drunk and hopeful, and try their smoothest moves to try to impress me while I barely conceal my scorn and eyeball them with a starvation they mistake for sexual. The returning philosophy student who tried to wow me with his scanty reading list... he was easy. He hardly put up a struggle. After I lured him on an impromptu midnight hike it was no effort at all to "trip" into the ravine and then knock his head on a rock and drown him in the stream when he came down to rescue me. I bled him out into the water with a single quick flick of my Benchmade pocketknife (buy local!), carved out a section of rump meat which went into the Ziploc bag I carried in my purse, and dragged his body up into the underbrush, where his bones would be scattered by coyotes and bears.

No doubt in a couple of weeks I'll start seeing his face on homemade "missing" posters around town. If, by then, I even remember it.

http://www.change.org/petitions/the-internet-stop-making-online-petitions#

Online petitions are useless, and pretty much a waste of time. Decision-makers are more concerned about the opinions of their political constituencies, whether they be voters in a specific district or special interest groups, than unverified names from the Internet. Signing online petitions makes people feel like they are doing something to help the world, when in fact they are actually doing nothing.

Even the few seconds spend signing an online petition could better be spent doing something else for change.

I HAVE A NEW THEME SONG WHICH IS ALSO THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN ON YOUTUBE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IF5WYaoWXI4

My friend informs me that she finds it hilarious and difficult to explain spray cheese to Brits. Is it true that you don't have spray cheese over there???

but this shit is fucking funny.

http://luckyshirt.tumblr.com/tagged/rant

THIS IS AMAZING!  

It may be the Holiest™ thing I have ever fucking seen. Hot damn!

I am going to take the movie to EOT's house and force him to watch it with me.

JUST GOD FUCKING DAMN IT

Man, remember being 15?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehSURbG7cxA

One of the worst years of my life. I can't even tell you. As awful as things had been before, that was the year everything changed forever. Three concussions in rapid succession left me epileptic, only I didn't know it for years so I just thought I was strange.

Oh, and I met my first husband. LOL.

NOBODY FUCKING CARES STOP IT.

http://markamerica.com/

It was open on my desktop this morning, and WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS MAN INHALING?

The reason Sarah Palin had been so appealing was not because she had been perfectly conservative on every issue so much as because she showed integrity in carrying out her office, and a simple devotion to the principle that she was elected to serve her state and its people,  but not the entrenched interests.

WHAT

I will try to keep this spaggotry contained here.




The idea of stopping loving him
impossible, like stopping breath
or stopping rain, or the sunrise
or the coming of winter. I flow
with the cliches of endings.

I know it will happen anyway,
the stopping. It's time itself, this
process of cessation. It ends.
Weeks later, it will seem to ease
with the agony of breathing in.

Moments and then minutes
and hours will go by, without
thinking of the empty of missing;
him. Who is only another animal
made of fluid held within skin.

The private jokes and the plans
and the ideas of art and the close
moments we shared will all fade
and in time, again, just as it did
once before; will become simpler.

And I will stop. The circles, secrets
the minute intimate understandings
will all fade into distant obscurity
and someone else will come along.
I will share my weakness, and laugh.

http://www.koinlocal6.com/news/local/story/Portland-woman-boyfriend-wont-face-charges-in/O5kF74cxmUikMab_W02A2g.cspx

NSFW: http://pics.spaceghetto.st/images/5muaq.jpg

I don't know why people are so upset about it.

CANNED PIZZA, CONTAINING BALLS OF DOUGH AND PIZZA SAUCE AND PEPPERONI AND CHEESE.

OK NOW YOU GO.

I'm not sure what makes it "quantum" exactly, but this is pretty cool: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/quantum-levitation/

...and when I get back on it I see this: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=george+strait+lp&_sacat=See-All-Categories

...about running for office, but I have no idea where to start. Do you (or anyone) have any suggestions regarding reading materials or places to start?

I know I have to stay upbeat, and I have to just keep chugging along, but months go by and I can't catch up and I have no health insurance and there's something wrong in my guts and no matter how many hours I try to work every day someone wants a form or a document or a chunk of time and there is never enough time and I can't catch up and I can't get enough sleep and I don't have enough time to do all the things I need to get done in a day and I can't find the form, I can't find the form, I forgot to sign the form and they want me to start over but I don't know where I'll find the time and I'm just

so

tired.

End corporate personhood! http://www.change.org/petitions/the-president-of-the-united-states-end-corporate-personhood

Also the Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restore-Democracy/145255382239667

Unlike Day of Rage, I kind of like the occupy movement. I predict lots and lots of arrests and actual disruption. What do you guys think about Occupy?

http://hamspiracy.com/

I have a feeling we'll want to keep an eye on this page.

FTR I said over a year ago that ham is the next bacon. And how is my track record for predictions?

AW YEAH, BABY. HAM.

Clearly, NSFW but awesome: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lobsterrags/6047484256/in/photostream

I'm not sure whether to laugh or punch someone: http://jjroid.com/2011/09/starbucks-what-happened-to-you/

This poor man has been DISCRIMINATED against by Starbucks, who had the nerve to ask him to please not hang out in their store for hours using their space as a free office.

DISCRIMINATION, I SAY!

This nice blogger has some good comments about it: http://www.popehat.com/2011/09/23/are-freakishly-entitled-pretentious-douches-a-suspect-class/

This article does, I think, a really good job of illustrating why feminism is still important and relevant, and further, highlights why the most crucial feminists in this age are men:

http://www.thenewagenda.net/2011/09/17/a-message-to-women-from-a-man-you-are-not-%E2%80%9Ccrazy%E2%80%9D/

How do you handle it when you are working on a piece of art or writing or music and someone interrupts you with non-essential chit chat? Does it break your concentration or do you just sail right through without really noticing it? Sometimes I feel like a freak because I'll be concentrating on writing or design or just getting into the headspace to make stuff and someone interrupts me or calls or drops by unannounced, and it breaks me completely out of the flow of what I was doing, to the point where it can take me an hour or more (in a few cases, days) to return to the same creative space I was in. Is this normal or am I some kind of hypersensitive spaz?

This story, occurring just days after a slug started a fire by shorting out a wall heater in a Eugene, Oregon apartment, shows a disturbing trend. The slugs are out to get us!

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/9248905.Rogue_slug_brings_Darlington_traffic_to_standstill/

I just received the following email:

Hello [Nigel's real name],

On your last order placed with FiltersFast.com on 3/16/2007 you requested to be notified in 6 months that it is time to change your water filter.

That time has passed and it is now time to change your water filter. Below you will find a link to the product(s) that you ordered when you signed up for our free reminder service.

We also would like to offer you a $5 discount on your next order of $75 or more as our Thank You to you for your continued business! This coupon will be active for a limited time, so don't miss out on the extra savings. To redeem the discount, simply enter the discount code 5offcustomer in the discount code box while in the shopping cart and click on the update button. You will see the discount reflected in your total.

If you only need one or two filters, you can take advantage of our $1 discount on your next order regardless of the order size! To redeem this discount, simply enter the discount code 8899111 in the discount code box while in the shopping cart and click on the update button. You will see the discount reflected in your total.

You last ordered the following products. Click the product name to view the details and to order your replacement.

Brita GE MWF, GWF Compatible Refrigerator Filter

Seriously?

A very long time ago, in a forested area that is just to the southeast of what was once the continent's largest city, a young woman lived in the outskirts of a village. It was an unimportant village, and people there mostly avoided the war and politicking that went on in more populated areas, living their lives as they had for many generations, hunting, farming, loving, worshipping, weaving, and having the same petty intrigues and gossip and fallings-out that people have always had; raising their children, tending their elders, and growing close to friends, spending hours in the evenings talking with each other. This is when people still knew how to talk and how to listen, and how to not mind the silences that fell when everyone was beginning to get tired and reflect on what had been said.

The woman was brown and strong and healthy, with dark brown eyes and thick black hair and a strong high nose like the eyes and hair and noses of the other women in the village, and she lived on the outskirts because she was a priestess. She had large white teeth and smiled often. Her primary job was to perform the duties associated with the transfer of souls from death to underworld and from underworld to birth. Her altar was no more than a pale stone slab that lay on the ground, and her temple was a simple arch. Her position as priestess was hereditary, and her father, also a priest, taught her the rites of death and birth. The village was healthy, and she was happy. She became pregnant, and this was a blessing which made her even happier.

Her son was the most beautiful baby she had ever seen, with her same wavy thick black hair and curly eyelashes, and his eyes were like obsidian mirrors. She loved him fiercely, with every part of her being, and as he grew, and his eyes lightened to a deep brown, they spent many hours playing together in the forest near the altar, where she taught him to be as observant and fluent of the language of the plants and small wildlife as she had been taught by her own father and mother. She taught him about the frogs and the insects, the pronghorns and the wrens. Life was right and good for the young woman with her village and beloved villagers, her parents, and her beautiful son.

I don't know how she died; possibly of infection from a wound, possibly of complications from another pregnancy. It seemed important at the time, but it really isn't. Her grieving father performed the rites of death, showing her son for the first time how to prepare the dark-green leaves from a certain small tree into a drink that would help him to channel the god who carries souls from the dead to the underworld in his belly, to wait to be assigned by the wife of Death to a newborn body.

The young priest had few friends; he had needed none, because he was still at an age where his best friend was his mother. He was small and slight and had not yet developed an interest in girls. Despite the attention of his grandparents, he was now alone, and profoundly lonely.

Some months after his mother's death, among the other births, a baby girl was born in the village, and not long after she was born, he looked past her curly lashes into her obsidian mirror eyes.

After that, they were inseparable. They had an arrangement. How fortunate that their Goddess was the Goddess of assigning souls! Usually they would be husband and wife. Sometimes she would precede him into death and he would be her grandfather for a while, laughing at her toddler antics as she played around his feet. Sometimes he would be the teacher and she the student, sometimes they would be siblings, but they were always together. It wasn't always a kind life; there was pain and strife and suffering. But in the village, it was mostly a clean and straightforward life. They were together this way for over three hundred years.

Until the last time. I don't know what happened; perhaps he was bound or killed or taken away. Perhaps the magic that allowed them to find each other was broken. Perhaps he was protecting her from something, because often the most painful mistakes men make are the ones that are meant to be for the good of the ones they love. But whatever happened, the last time, he did not call the soul-eater god to carry her into the underworld in his belly. He was not waiting for her, and he did not come back. She waited for him, and waited until the waiting became despair and the despair became bitterness. Lost in confusion and sorrow, she didn't notice at first that around her the happy village that she loved faded and died away. The old rites were no longer practiced, and her altar and arch became forgotten and overgrown. The gold and blue paint that once represented the wings of the goddess of rebirth was long gone. When the time came that no more babies were born in the village, she couldn't wait any longer.

After a while, no one would know there had ever been a village there, not even the builders when they came to put up row after row of blank red houses for the new civilization that had no priestesses at all.

The once-young-woman lived now in a world where true partnership between sexes was mostly forgotten, if not forbidden, and she knew that this world was poisonous. It had eaten her old world. She made herself forget her village and her mate, her abandonment and anger. She even, mostly, forgot that she had been a priestess. Far away from the happy days of playing among the trees, she found other loves, had children, and at times she was even content. Sometimes, though, the pain of loss and loneliness would bubble up from a place deeper than memory, strong enough to pin her to the ground.

There is a story that Death's wife, her pride wounded over her husband's infidelity, killed him and took his mantle, hiding her feathered wings beneath it and assuming his duties alongside her own, and that this is why men, afraid, stopped working together with women and forgot that the goddess had once been their mother.

The American dream, embodied (literally): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/03/worlds-heaviest-woman_n_942546.html

  Is he trolling?

Not really. But some random crazy person is REALLY pissed off about his latest painting.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/bijijoo/6011973431/

Special delivery: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHy7DGLTt8g&feature=related

This guy used to make me laugh so hard, and then I forgot about him, and then someone reminded me. He's genius. Best Craiglist troll ever.

http://dontevenreply.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO_u-EkJZ8E&feature=youtu.be