Yesterday, we received our January GOOP.com e-newsletter. For those of who you haven't been keeping up with soft-launched online media ventures, this hilarious corner of the Internets is helmed by Gwyneth Paltrow, with the aim of helping us all "nourish the inner aspect." But this time, Mrs. Goop is being really, um, specific about the whole "inner" part. What better way to capture the hearts of your fans and subscribers than to wish them a Happy New Year with suggestions on how to increase the quality and quantity of your visits to the little girls' room? Suddenly, it's all a little too much:
Worried that your man may endanger himself -- and his limbs -- this New Year's Eve by setting off illegal fireworks? Well, the women of Naples, Italy are, but luckily they've come up with a solution: withhold sex from their husbands and boyfriends unless they swear to refrain from amateur explosions. According to the BBC, hundreds of Italian ladies are pledging to make their partners sleep on the sofa if that's what it takes to get the word out about firework safety. From the article:
Local authorities are backing the women and have sent out text messages urging the men to "make love, not explosions"... ''If a sex strike is what it takes in order to get the attention of our men, husbands, partners and sons, then we're ready for it," Mrs Staiano, 44 [a founder of the campaign] told Italy's Ansa news agency.
Does anyone else see the problem with that quote? While I'm all for women using their sexy powers for good -- heck, I'd probably be all for women using their sexy powers for evil -- it's a little disturbing that Ms. Staiano says the sex strike could grab the attention of "sons." You mean if their girlfriends joined in, right? Right? At least the movement has lofty inspiration:
The move was inspired by the ancient Greek play Lysistrata, in which the women of Athens refuse to have sex unless their men folk forge a truce with their rivals from Sparta. Doctor and local councillor Vincenzo Sorrentino, who has long campaigned against the illegal fireworks, said a sex ban was "an issue that men are particularly sensitive to''.
Well, I would think so, oh brilliant one. My question is, how long does the sex strike go on? Like, if your man lights illegal fireworks despite your anti-lovin' threats, do you hold out on him just through the New Year? Does the ban go through January? Or is it indefinite? It's not like he'll be able to prove his newfound dislike for explosives again until the next December 31st, and that's a long time to sleep on the sofa.
While it was tempting to take up the cause of Sex and the City as feminist text in response to a post over on the wonderful Feministing, there are more pressing matters at hand, like pictures of hot, hot people making out and stuff. Even better: it's hot people making out with purpose!
Feministing's Miriam links to the newly relaunched Queer Eye Candy, a photo blog brought to you by SugarButch. QEC takes photos of butch/femme women (ladies? individuals? girls? help! I want to get it right!), genderqueer folks, lesbians and all manner of others who've been marginalized and oppressed and otherwise abused and made invisible because of their sexuality. In light of the recent gay rights debacles, the site is brilliantly putting real faces on an all-too-anonymous "them."
In an interesting twist, the QEC folks do see the site as a kind of evaluation of appearance, which would typically make this Doll squirm. Says Admin Sinclair on the site:
This is not a "hot or not" project - this is more of a project a la Malcolm Gladwell's Blink - what does your brain do when you first
glance at the queer eye candy photo? Do you think "hubba hubba, omg
hot!!"? WRITE THAT. Do you think "holy crap I have that same shirt! I
wonder if it looks that good on me?" WRITE THAT. Do you think "Oh good
lord, I would marry her on looks alone"? (That's Bevin's line I shamelessly stole.) GO FOR IT ... This is about building self-confidence through appearance. About
celebrating the myriad of ways that butch and femme get represented
through visual styles and identity.
Celebrating a diverse visual expression and finding beauty and positivity both within and without seems like a fine goal for everyone, methinks. So submit, and promptly. Now I'm gonna take off this hippie-dippy robe and get back to my usual snark.
From the brilliant minds that decided to turn a Disney ride into a major Hollywood movie comes, apparently, the film version of Second Life! Wow, is this ever a bad idea. Here's how ValleyWag tells it:
The director of Pirates of the Caribbean is planning Second Life: The Movie. Too late! The lonely virtual world lost its buzz two years ago. Why is Hollywood always so behind the times?
The
movie business has always been late to catch on to trends. But the
swift shifts of technology make the studios' sluggishness all the more
embarrassing.
ValleyWag comes up with many potential problems with the virtual world heading to the big screen -- apart from, as anyone who's spent a lot of time in Second Life could predict, its general lameness. Granted, an overweight protagonist getting sucked into a porn-filled online sex den doesn't sound nearly as catchy as Johnny Depp roaming the high seas. Still, if they could turn Pirates of the Caribbean into something I actually enjoy watching...
For all those of us who've always coveted old-fashioned skirts but couldn't figure out the appropriate excuse to wear them...
Slate has a new video up in which they send their "Human Guinea Pig" out to check out a farm that recreates life right before the American Civil War. Dressed in fluffy cotton outfits, dancing around each other to celebrate weddings, and baking unrecognizable sweets, the people who work/live on this farm talk in the first person, as if they really were 18th-century Americans, and not modern-dayers with iPods secretly tucked under their puffy sleeves. Many of them claim it's a great way of life. As for Slate's human guinea pig, she looks awkward, out of place, and not so 1770's.
I've always had mixed feeling toward people who dress up like they're from olden times -- Civil War re-enacters and Renaissance Faire dorks and such. On the one hand, it doesn't get dorkier than that. On the other, they get to wear cool clothes that would get me funny looks walking down the street. When else do you get do you get to wear that many skirts?
The ever excellent Sarah Haskins has dedicated the most recent edition of Target Women to Twilight, the vampire series/movie that has women across the country swooning to be "bitten." Specifically, she's gone to a Twilight poster signing in L.A. to interview female fans about what it would be like to date an actual vampire. She even grills a few moms (or would-be moms) on whether they'd let their daughters date someone like the film's main character. The best is the mother who says she wants her daughter off doing illegal things and having fun. The daughter, on the other hand, looks downright horrified. Check it out:
But I stand by my beliefs: I find a prominent male package poking out from one's pants to be problematic. Nay, I find it to be tasteless. Indeed, I think it's gross.
And so when I saw the Trouser Expander on The Frisky late yesterday evening, I had to give it some long (ooooh long) and hard (ooooh hard) thought. The contraption, which is basically an airbag a gentleman might stick down his pants in order to give the impression of a larger sized member, is clearly a gag and a joke. But it also completely freaks me out. Am I being sex-neg for finding the moose-knuckle icky? Shouldn't I be telling men to take pride in their penises? But isn't that what we've been doing for thousands of years already--both literally and figuratively?
'Cause I'm here to tell you that this straight girl has no problem with the male parts, as it were. Totally happy with 'em. Have found them to be pleasant, all around. You could even say I like them immensely. But as far as a wad sticking out from beneath your inseam? Please, men of the world, do not even joke about it. I suspect that men do not feel similarly about prominently displayed breasts, and neither do I, perhaps due to the ubiquitous nature of cleavage. Which is probably tied into the non-ubiquitous nature of the visible male package. Then again, I think pretty much all public flaunting of sex organs and associated paraphernalia to be downright tasteless. Oh, the system, why do you torture me so?
But if you must exist, Trouser Expander, at least try to make it look real. Jeez.
Once again, Threadless' super cute designs have succeeded in capturing my current angst. This new "escape" design, featuring none other than an anthropomorphized escape key, offers just what I need right now: a chance to get away from the stress of the Internet with a little Internet shopping. See, it's on vacation... somewhere sunny and fun-looking. That's just the kind of place you won't be going to this year with your holiday free time, because travel is way too expensive. Everything is way too expensive -- especially when we're in a recession and you don't have any damn money. In fact, the only think you can probably afford is this $15 t-shirt. You and me both, fellow dolls, you and me both.
On the off chance that staring at cute shirts makes you feel better about life on the Internet and the crap state of the economy like it does for me, here are some of my other favorites from Threadless' recent additions. Oh, and their holiday sale is going on right now, which means buy, buy, buy:
God bless Funny Or Die, one of the internet's only reliable sources for consistently great comedic material that doesn't (always) involve a furry animal or something falling from a great height. It's great for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is its consistent engagement of truly famous people in little webby nuggets of social commentary goodness. Heck, FoD almost made me like Paris Hilton there for a minute ... and 51 seconds. But she's a small star in a tiny constellation compared to FoD's latest cultural indictment.
Enter "Prop 8: The Musical," featuring Margaret Cho, Maya Rudolph, Allison Janney, John C. Reilly and Jack Black, among a host of other famous folk.
So, that cat lover that Bonnie was talking about yesterday, the one you can buy all of Salon's cat-lover presents from the gift guide for? That's me. I think about cats all the time. I think about their fur and their welfare and their happiness. I think of my own in particular--Whiskey and Sake--and what they're doing when I'm away from home and if they're having what we, in our one-person, two-cat, three-soul household, call "big fun."
So please don't misunderstand me when I tell you that I Can Has Cheezburger is probably by favorite website of all time. Unfortunately, the more you love something, the more apt you are to be disappointed by its failings, and ICHC has committed a massive FAIL. And they're calling it a WIN.
Specifically, Once Upon A WIN, the brand new ICHC web arm dedicated to twenty- and thirtysomething nostalgia. Since its launch two days ago, OUAW has featured Bob Ross and Fun Dip, among other distant, fond memories. But there are no grammatically suspect captions. Not necessarily any cute animals. Just photos of "epic WINS" from the past, usually captioned with a Wikipedia excerpt.
ICHC, this is lazy, not to mention a complete underestimation of your readership. You've capitalized on the creativity of others, so why stop letting us be creative? Let us make our own WINS, or let us FAIL.
Sometimes Salon is serious and politically relevant and feminist and excellent. Sometimes it's just all about cats. Yes, the site is currently running not one, but an entire three-part series of articles on gifts (bargain, mid-range, and luxury) you can buy for someone who loves cats. Seriously though, most of these holiday goodies are more of a treat for the felines involved than the people who feed them. Really, disguising animal presents as people presents? That somehow seems low. Still, some of Salon's selected cat gifts are to good to not giggle over. Here are my favorites:
- The FURminator, a really, really intense brush you have to be careful not to use too aggressively on your furry friend, otherwise you might leave them bald. Fun!
- The Modern Litter Cabinet, a device that makes your cat's box o' poo look like a swank, minimalist foot rest, or possibly an ironically sadistic toaster. At least it'll look nice, even if it doesn't smell nice.
Ball of hate today, and Slate's "Interviews $.50" isn't helping. In the latest installment, the fabulous Alex Chadwick interviews a 40-something woman who hooked up with her much younger neighbor (a boy, Trevor) and is having trouble containing all her smugness into the 4 minute video. Seriously, keep a vom bag handy.
I am totally confused. Can someone help explain this narrative to me? At the beginning, it sounds like she screwed a 17-year-old (the "interlude" in question) and then somewhere around the 2 minute mark, Trevor is somehow five years older when it happens?
What I can't get past is the completely immature, cavalier attitude that this woman has toward the whole thing--not to mention bringing up her neighbors, Trevor's parents, by name! (Bambi and John, SRSLY.) I suppose it's no wonder she slept with the guy, considering she appears to have the emotional maturity of a girl who got her period yesterday. Am I being sexist for not cheering on this woman's empowered Hefner-style conquest?
Who else could possibly be on the receiving end of this journo love but Maureen Dowd? (Oh please, don't tell me you were thinking of Nancy Grace.) Over at the Dowd Report, they chronicle each and every one of Dowd's columns and various articles, logging her cultural references and picking her words and her self to pieces. This is called "fisking" when it's done on the Internet, as opposed to "being completely creepy" or possibly "editing" when it's done anywhere else. My impression is that the anonymous bloggers over at the Dowd Report mean it to be kind of admiring and silly, rather than snarky and pseudo-stalkerish. When someone dedicates their life to fisking you, I think it can only be a good thing. Congrats, Maureen.
But if the perpetually self-fellating/cunnilingling media news-o-sphere is your thing, and I'm here to tell you that it most certainly is mine, then you may enjoy the Huffington Post love letter cum column by Leslie Griffith about CNN's Sara Sidner, the sole India bureau reporter whose reporting last week of the Mumbai terrorist attacks was compelling, informed and informing. Watch this and try to tell me the woman doesn't have one of the hardest jobs in journalism:
We've talked about a lot of bad ads here at Heartless Doll -- drink ads, hot tub ads, even condom ads -- but never before have we had to complain about a video game ad. Yet recently fellow doll/reader Angela wrote in to voice her frustration with a new ad for Animal Crossing: City Folk, a cute, non-violent game that Nintendo is marketing toward women. Angela feels the venerable game maker is passing on the stereotype that, "yes, [we girls] like games that look like they were designed for 3-year-olds." Check out the video and decide for yourself.
While I certainly appreciate what it's like to feel like men look down on women in the world of video games, I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one, Angela. While Animal Crossing may look kiddy, it's actually a pretty complicated, well-known, and well-respected game. True, Judith Butler might be a bit happier to hear about a Nintendo ad featuring women battling it out in a gun-filled first-person shooter, but this game is a heck of a lot better than, let's say, Image: Babyz. Plus it's at least somewhat nice to know that Nintendo is thinking about female gamers at all, something other game companies are still blissfully ignoring. Give the game a try, Angela. You might like it!
Yesterday, we received our January GOOP.com e-newsletter. For those of who you haven't been keeping up with soft-launched online media ventures, this hilarious corner of the Internets is helmed by Gwyneth Paltrow, with the aim of helping us all "nourish the inner aspect." But this time, Mrs. Goop is being really, um, specific about the whole "inner" part. What better way to capture the hearts of your fans and subscribers than to wish them a Happy New Year with suggestions on how to increase the quality and quantity of your visits to the little girls' room? Suddenly, it's all a little too much:
