Do y’all feel the same way, or is it just me? Tell us how your week is going so far in the comments!

This Mother's Day, I want to celebrate cuteness. Image from thefw.com.

A dear friend of mine recently lost twins going into her sixth month of pregnancy, after years (and years, and years) of trying to get pregnant. Another close friend is watching her husband die of cancer and can’t stop thinking about her miscarriages, about the impossibility of having children with the man she loves. My sister is pregnant after a successful round of IVF, which took a lot out of her, physically as well as fiscally. Meanwhile, my motherhood is something that happened by chance, on accident, because of a slip-up.

I have a lot to celebrate on Mother’s Day — I have a healthy kid who makes me laugh, I have a healthy mother who keeps me grounded. But I’m struggling with the fact that we have a holiday, made more in-your-face by our consumer culture, that rubs salt in the wounds of those who have not been as lucky as me. For so many of us, motherhood just happens — unexpectedly, like for me, or after a few months of letting go of birth control. It happens so effortlessly that it is easy to forget that it’s not that way for everybody. And therein lies the injustice.

There are so many aspects of our society in which the ability to bear children is taken completely for granted. The assumption is that everybody can do it, and should do it, and that if you aren’t, it’s because you don’t want to. It’s not that people are insensitive to others’ pain — it’s that they are completely ignorant of it.

My own Facebook feed is smothered in pictures and videos and status updates about my kid. I think she’s hilarious, and she is the focus of all of my attention when I am at home; of course I post a lot about her. As do many, many people around my age. Somebody who is having trouble conceiving can hide me from their feed, of course, but if other people’s kid updates serve as reminders of your pain, it seems that the only option is to forego Facebook altogether.

People ask me all the time when we are going to have another kid — even relative strangers. I have seen people ask my friends who are struggling with infertility when they are going to bite the bullet; their hardships are completely invisible. If other people asking you about your plans to have children as though it is no big deal serves as reminders of your pain, it seems the only option is to forego interactions with strangers altogether.

My marriage was built around the eventual addition of kids. Sure, it was built on love and trust and butterfly wings, but there was always an assumption that there would be more to us than us. If a childless marriage serves as a constant reminder of your pain, it seems the only option is to forego marriage altogether.

But you can’t forego Mother’s Day. It’s everywhere. It’s on every television commercial, it’s in every store, it’s on the radio and on every website. It is a holiday that is, in some senses, a public celebration of those who are privileged enough to not have to worry about it.

Of course, that isn’t what it is for everybody. Of course, it is a day to celebrate how motherhood has changed your life, and how your children have changed you, and their time to appreciate your sacrifices and your time to appreciate their silliness and sloppy kisses. There is nothing wrong with wanting to celebrate that; there is everything right in wanting to celebrate that. But the celebration has become so public that there is no escaping it if it causes you pain.

I love the feminine form of the 8.

In other parts of the world, there is no Mother’s Day, but instead, the 8th of March is International Women’s Day. I love this — I love that it is a celebration of all women. Children celebrate their mothers, brothers celebrate their sisters, women celebrate their friends. Instead of a day based on an individual’s relationship to another individual, it is a day based on the individual herself. This is inclusive of the voluntarily and involuntarily childless, and it does not presuppose that a woman is only really a woman if she has a child.

There are so many times in my life when I have the answer, or something that I think I can fight towards. Not with this. I don’t know how to lessen the pain of those around me who struggle with infertility, and I don’t know how to celebrate my own completely-by-accident privileges while not being so in-your-face and/or blind to the pain that others go through. Not everybody celebrates on Mother’s Day — women who want to have children but can’t, women who don’t want to have children and don’t want to justify it, children who come from broken or abusive homes. I guess, for me, the answer is to tone it down, to celebrate privately. I wish there were a better way to for me to rejoice in my good fortune without making others’ pain invisible.

• “What? Houses that look all the same, out in the middle of nowhere? Nooooo, that’s not a Las Vegas subdivision at all.” (My mother-in-law may or may not live in such a place.)
• “Wait a minute, shouldn’t it be stone walls and not wooden fences?”
• “Lisa Loeb! How did Lisa Loeb turn up in this movie? She is adorable.”
• “Ah, David Tennant’s hair! That’s hilarious. Look at him. Look at him. I love this already.”
• “He is so skinny. His legs are, like, half the size of yours or mine.” [pause] “Hee! Leather pants.”
• “He says ‘Well,’ like the Doctor.”
• “The sound effects in this might be the grossest part.” (Re-creations of sound effects ensue.)
• “See, even when Colin Farrell’s all evil and deadly, I’m still like, ‘Mmm. Still hot.’”
• “Imogen Poots! Pajiba had a list awhile back with her name being one of the most British names ever.”
• “I can’t imagine watching this in 3-D. The picture’s so dark already.”
• “The leather pants. Seriously. I love him. Don’t lie. You love him too.”

Obviously, my running commentary is totally intellectual. Yep. You know it, I know it, the mister knows it. Also, I may have been aided by red wine.

In short, yes, Fright Night is a very entertaining movie, beyond the novelty of David Tennant in eyeliner. I didn’t quite know what to expect when I first saw the previews, but I’m glad I came around.

I leave you with this:

This is Bill Pullman (photo from IMDB.com)

Bill Pullman

Born 1953

Notable Roles: He played the president in Independence Day, he played opposite Sandra Bullock in While You Were Sleeping, and he was in my childhood favorite, Spaceballs. He was also in Titan A.E. (see below as to why this might be important)

Bill Paxton (photo from IMDB)

Bill Paxton

Born 1955

Notable Roles: He’s been in Titanic (same first five letters as Titan A.E., but so not), Apollo 13, and Twister. He’s the only actor to have appeared in the Aliens trilogy AND the Predator trilogy.

So after looking at what these two men have accomplished, I understand Selena’s dilemma. They are close in age and have similar features. At first, I was going to say, “If it’s an action flick, it’s Paxton.” But there’s Independence Day on Pullman’s list. Then I discovered that Paxton starred in Big Love. So.

If you are watching Big Love, it’s Bill Paxton.

If you are watching Spaceballs, it’s Bill Pullman.

If you are watching an action flick that isn’t Independence Day, it’s probably Bill Paxton.

Selena, did this help you out at all? If nothing else, know that my research validates your confusion!

The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing. by Darina Al-Joundi with Mohamed Kacimi

There’s something sickeningly, childishly disturbing as Darina Al-Joundi mouths Gloria Gaynor’s classic ode to heartbreak and letting go while not even two feet away, her friend puts a bullet through his head. With brain splattered in her hair, and the screams of another friend in the background, she continues to mouth the lyrics, pausing only for a moment to take the dose of cocaine out of his hand. “The hit is more important than death.” she echoes, parroting what the now-dead man had muttered only moments earlier, a reaction that seems so incoherently numb, until you realize that between the shells, the bodies, and the background of the Israeli-Lebanon war, that this senseless death just makes sense.

But to get to this point, one has to start at the beginning, a scene which involves the author locking herself in a bathroom while blasting Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman”  and “Save Me” so loud that the prayers of her Muslim neighbors cannot be heard. She resents them for showing up at her father’s funeral, for bringing their religion, one that has never corresponded with the secular upbringing she has come to know so intimately. “Make sure to play Nina Simone at my funeral, do not dare let others speak the Koran,” he has said to her over and over. As the music blares and the fists of the neighborhood men become more obvious as they pound on the door, Al-Joundi wonders, Who will protect me from these monsters? What does she do with the knowledge so embedded into her blood, the teachings of a father that have entrenched the same warning over and over. “Watch out my girl, all the men in this country are monstrous to women.” The soon-to-be consequences of this warning fade, and it is then that Al-Joundi begins to tell us of her parents, her childhood, and how all normalcy just came tumbling down.

It begins in secular Beruit with a family that is dominated by her well-known Shiite Lebanese radio broadcaster mother and even more influenced by her secular Syrian father, who is not only a teacher and journalist, but a political refugee. Al-Joundi’s childhood is like that of many, with the exception that her father raises her sister and her to be “liberated women,” as you can begin to feel the inklings of cultural change leaking in. Al-Joundi lavishes in his attention and finds her father to be the greatest force for defying that around her, confiding in him that which most grown women can barely speak of in the presence of their fathers. From getting his young daughter drunk, to explaining to her that he would rather her fuck every man in Beruit, rather than marry, he begins an education that will both serve as the backdrop for Al-Joundi’s unconventional life, one that will take her everywhere from marriage, to rape, abuse, and defying the face of death. It is perhaps this template for behavior that, while Al-Joundi admits first hand is both simultaneously “liberating” and “destructive,” is that which carries her through the next few years of living in a full-on war zone, where she witnesses first hand not just the destruction of her beautiful Lebanon, but the destruction of so many around her.

Her father’s insistence on her liberation becomes more education than lifestyle as the war slowly begins to creep in like a disease. “Let’s smoke cigarettes,” he says, as shells literally blow through their living room. “Let’s talk about fucking,” he exclaims, as bullets whip past them on the streets and corpses become as common as live people. Along with her father’s lectures on sex and drinking comes the practical like dismantling a Kalashnikov, then putting it back together with her eyes closed. These bizarre acts become fits of normalcy in a place that has lost reason, and by the time Al-Joundi is fourteen and working with the local medics pulling bullets from civilians, you understand with a strange clarity when all she can say about the experience is: “My hands have never held so many bullets.”

But as with war, comes the coping — Al Joundi finds herself drinking an entire fifth of liquor, wondering aloud what it might be like to have sex on actual sheets, as opposed to the places she is so used to as a matter of convenience. She is hungry for that which will distract her and make her feel alive, as it seems the constant threat of perhaps dying on the streets has become something of a joke. At the tipping point of her escalated behavior, its announced that there is a peace accord between Lebanon and Israel, something that does nothing but elevate her hunger. “Fear had fine-tuned me and all my gestures made sense only in relationship to that fear,” she says as she walks through the experiences that will show her what exactly the consequences are for being a liberated woman. From spousal abuse to abortion, to several marriages that seemed more like ways of coping with at least one other person, Al-Joudi wanders through these with a strange calmness, even detachment. It is only when she is dragged by her hair and beaten in front of a room full of peers who find it all too easy to ignore the actuality of what lays before their eyes, that the worse of her expectations comes sinking in. “Put her back in her place!” they scream. “Whore!” “You poor thing,” one of her assailants mocks. “Only men are free.”

I wish it were possible to say that this is the end, but what comes next is beyond what could have ever been expected, ending the last few pages with a whimper, rather than a bang. However, it is this whimper that presents the ultimate contradiction of what women can experience as liberated beings: if you want to get anywhere, you have to play the game. “I had understood our vulnerability as women: it’s fine to be a star, a doctor, a celebrity, but at the slightest mis-step, a woman becomes a woman again, a beast of burden who is tied up as men see fit… I knew I would have to make compromises, and at the same time, I had to play their game.” If anything ever rang truer, it really is that you can’t hate the player, but you can hate the game.

Al-Joundi’s story is not an anomoly, though of course, there are many experiences that she has been through that we may not intimately know. It is easy to feel the frustration that emanates from Al-Joudi’s words when she expresses the tiredness she feels at constantly being put into one category or another: druggie, whore, madwoman, lesbian,etc. There is also an understanding of how even in the filth and shit of her hometown, even in its absolute worst, she can always see how it really is the most beautiful city in the world, even though she knows she will never be able to go “home” once she has erased herself from it. As you read with bated breath, counting down the very last words of her story, wondering what will happen — something has to happen — as she nods quietly and subserviently, waiting for the moment of escape. “I had died at the convent of the cross and stayed there. I was born the day I left it.”  Your heart sinks for her, for everything that she has been through and knowing that even in the worst, she felt a deep love for that around her. To erase that is the only way to be reborn. So with the final sentence of the book, a quiet and emotionally distanced sentence, you realize that she has left behind what she loved so dearly. It’s only imagining what comes after that you begin to feel Al-Joundi’s spectacular voice come raging back again.

This is one of the reasons why I have chosen not to weigh in on the Time Magazine Attachment Parenting debacle. To me, it’s not worth talking about. “Are You Mom Enough?” is the title? Really? Talk about baiting women to start battling each other.

Hey look, let's bait women into fighting each other.

I am probably what you would call an attachment parent, although I don’t think of myself in that way. I breastfed Sofia until she was a little over 2, she comes into our bed every night to sleep with us, I wore her on my body when she was a baby. These things weren’t a political statement, and they weren’t a philosophy — they were things that felt right to me, or that made my life easier. It’s easier to tuck a baby into a wrap to walk the dog than it is to deal with a bulky stroller. Co-sleeping ensures that I get a little bit more sleep, and at this point, every minute is precious to me.  Breast-feeding was something that I wanted to do for six months, but Sofia needed the comfort for longer. There was never a moment when I thought, “Well, I’m going to be an attachment parent,” but a lot of what I did fell into the attachment parenting categories.

On the other hand, I am not the stereotypical attachment parent. I struggled with breastfeeding, especially at the beginning and at the end, and there are still times, usually when it’s the middle of the night and I am the only person who can comfort Sofia, when I think that formula feeding would have been preferable. I’d like to have my bed back. And even though it’s hard to admit this publicly, I don’t cherish every moment of her childhood.

So I didn’t want to talk about the Time Magazine cover. I don’t find it useful to put myself on one side of the “wars.” I have no interest in how other women raise their children, as long as it doesn’t affect mine.

If I’m being really honest, it goes beyond that. I have complicated feelings about extended breastfeeding. I emphatically did not want to be a woman who breastfed her 10-year-old. Even at 2, in the abstract, I get a little uncomfortable. That Time Magazine article — that could have been me and Sofia just a few months ago. It’s not like she couldn’t stand on a bench and breastfeed, and actually, there were times when she would stand next to me, latched on, while I was sitting at my desk. Still, seeing somebody else in that position gave me pause. I’ve been socialized to believe that tits are for sex and not for children.

But breastfeeding a toddler feels right. It feels no different, really, than breastfeeding an infant. It feels like you are giving your child something that they need. It feels cuddly and warm, and loving and sweet.

Seeing somebody else do it, though, reminds me of the discomfort that I felt towards the end. I stopped talking about it to people who didn’t know, because there was always a side-eye. Family members would say, “Are you still breastfeeding her?”, and it was awkward. It felt right to continue, but it felt wrong from the point of view of others. Maybe because I never fully identified with the label of an attachment parent, I didn’t feel like I could stand behind my choices because of a specific philosophy. I was just doing what felt right.

So I didn’t want to weigh in. I don’t feel comfortable standing on one side or the other of pretend wars, and I don’t think my personal choices should be up for public debate.

Until I saw this article, entitled “Time Magazine Cover: What About the Child?”, and I went apoplectic.

“What about the child” is a battle cry for those who have run out of logical arguments. “What about the child” has been used to say that interracial marriages should be illegal, that homosexuality should be illegal, that White Supremacy is awesome, that the Internet should be censored. I was listening to NPR the other day, and the topic was gay marriage. A woman called in and said, “if you look at ancient civilizations where homosexuality was normalized, they all are in ruins now.” Tom Ashbrook said, “isn’t that true of all ancient civilizations, even the ones without homosexuality?” The woman stuttered, and then said, “but we have to think about the effects on children.” It’s a last-ditch effort to justify your own biases when you run out of logic.

The argument generally goes like this: It’s not that I hate gays/bisexuals/minorities/women/breastfeeders, it’s that their children will be discriminated against and so it needs to stop. But who, exactly, is doing the discriminating? Who is feeding that terrible terrible situation for the children? Oh, right. The person making the argument.

“We need to protect the children from XYZ” really means “I will treat your child differently because of XYZ, so don’t do it.” We don’t need to protect the children from XYZ – we need to protect children from the person making the argument.

The kid in question might face some teasing because he was on a Time Magazine cover breastfeeding at the age of 3. So might one hundred thousand other kids whose pictures are on the internet running naked through sprinklers, or Eden Wood for being a pageant kid, or any of the Duggars. Kids are going to tease each other, and kids who are in the spotlight are going to take some extra teasing for that, regardless. That doesn’t mean that what is happening in the picture is wrong. Just the opposite. It means that what is happening in the picture – a nurturing, loving relationship between a mother and a child – should be more normalized.

Breastfeeding is on the rise in America. According to the CDC: “Breastfeeding rates in the United States increased significantly between 1993 and 2006. The percentage of infants who were ever breastfed increased from 60% among infants born in 1993-1994 to 77% among infants born in 2005-2006.” 77% of infants that were born at the same time as the kid in the picture also breastfed. If he gets bullied by other kids for this picture, the answer is simply, “Well, you did it too.” And they probably did.

I wouldn’t have done what the woman on the cover of Time did. I am ashamed to say that it would have been embarrassing for me to have such a public picture, because it feels like a private endeavor, and I don’t know if I could handle the scrutiny. But the fact that she did it makes it a little easier for me to talk about breastfeeding my daughter even when she was walking and talking, which, by the way, is in line with what the World Health Organization recommends.

Breastfeeding is good for children’s health, it feels like a loving and nurturing relationship, it is recommended to continue until they are two. The fact that some people are squicked out by it means that there is a problem with those people, not with breastfeeding.

I started this article by saying how much I hate the “mommy wars,” and I do. I have no interest in telling other people how they should feed their child, nor do I care about the sleeping habits, discipline habits, or political leanings of other parents. However, I can’t sit by and let others heap shame onto people that they don’t know because they are ill at ease. Sure, the argument is “think of the child,” but that’s not what the real argument is. The real argument is “Breastfeeding makes me feel weird, so I am going to try to browbeat you into not doing it in front of me.”

If you’re really interested in making things okay for children, the answer is not to ask them to hide their nurturing relationship with their mother. The answer is to stop making children feel ashamed for getting comfort from their parents.

To start, let me be clear that I find nothing wrong with the strong emphasis people in academia place on the challenges facing women with children and/or significant others. I mean, just recently, I heard some people give young women in academia advice to freeze their eggs so that children would not derail their careers. Surprisingly, similar advice about freezing sperm as not been offered to young men in academia. The issues surrounding work-life balance and family planning must be addressed, and, if I can make a little bit of a stand, must start to acknowledge single mothers in a more open and helpful fashion.

However, and I chose “however” because it requires more syllables and time than a meager “but,” the issues surrounding family life are not the only ones faced by women in academia, and many women in academia do not yet face those issues at all. Instead, they are confronted with a lack of female role models in positions of power, such as tenured professors or deans or provosts. They are confronted by a backwards culture where their voices are not heard as loudly as men’s voices and where their leadership and skills are not given as much weight as men’s.

I am not saying that academia is a molding cesspool of horribleness. There are many positive initiatives that work to maintain a healthy work environment where people can cultivate strong academic careers. However, academia still has a long way to go in making sure that the already grueling academic environment is not made even more so for women. Support networks must link in single women who may find themselves un-tethered in a world where much of the outreach is dedicated to families.

I recognize I need to clarify again. This is my fault for being imprecise with my words, and I appreciate you, dear readers, following along with me on this topic, even as I search for the best way to discuss it. I bring up the working-mom and family-issues frameworks only because they are the most prominent frameworks for outreach towards women in academia that we have right now.  I do not want to pit women with families against single women. I do not think that adding resources to one takes away from the other. Resources should be given to both groups, especially given how fluid those group boundaries are, and especially especially given how universal many of the concerns and issues are. It is false to suggest that women with families could not be helped by general outreach that address the challenges faced by women in academia.

And while I am on this sort of rant, let me just throw out the importance of maybe acknowledging intersectionality in this outreach; the challenges faced by women of color, QUILTBAG individuals, international students, just to name a few groups, are unique but not fully distinct from each other. I am sick of seeing the same seminar on work-life-family balance being offered every semester. It needs to be addressed, but we must move beyond that. There are so many other challenges that must be acknowledged.

Our State.

“North Carolina” bashing has been pretty damn popular on Twitter and Facebook lately, by celebrities who’ve never even visited, non-natives, and natives alike. It’s pretty easy to look at a majority of 61% and call the whole state a bunch of backward rednecks, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Let’s look at a little context:

North Carolina ranks 47^th in unemployment. We’ve lost almost all of our major industries: the furniture market has been cut in half by competition in Nevada, the tobacco industry is under constant attack, and paper and textiles have taken significant cuts due to foreign markets. People are poor, they’re scared, and they’re afraid of any further change. When church is your only bit of hope for the week, who isn’t going to trust their pastor’s opinion on a piece of legislation?

More importantly, this isn’t about bigotry as much as it is about misinformation. If everyone knew about the civil union implications of this amendment, it definitely would not have passed. In fact, it is easy to see on a map of counties that the areas with universities (i.e. more college education) voted against it. I find it hard to believe that 61% of my state is populated by hateful bigots. It’s not. It is, however, uneducated on the topic. A close family friend of ours who is currently in a civil union didn’t even believe my dad when he told him he’d lose privileges for not being married. He told him that was a bunch of “liberal propaganda.”

Any correlation?

North Carolina is the 30^th state to pass such an amendment. In fact, we’re the last in the southeast. I’ve always liked to believe that my state was the most progressive one south of the Mason-Dixon line. And in fact, we were a swing state in the 2008 election. However, for every progressive action, there is an equal and opposite social-conservative backlash. Therefore, for the first time in over 50 years, we have a predominately republican state government. They had to do something to satiate their ravenous constituents who were furious with our “Communist Muslim of a President,” so they proposed this amendment.

When news came that the amendment passed, my roommate and I sat in our dorm, ate Twizzlers like it was our job, yelled at anyone and anything while pretending we didn’t want to cry. My university was downfallen. We know that it was our grandparents, our neighbors, and the people we love who just didn’t know that voted for this. It’s a hard thing to swallow.

It takes so much longer to build something with love than to destroy something with hate. It is easy to look around at all this destruction and assume the world is all hate, but don’t let its prevalence fool you. Love will always prevail.

“Let us remember that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. -MLK”

I’d like to interject my personal mantra, at this point in my life. Calling people who “voted for” a bunch of “ignorant bigots” will only increase the chasm between us, when in reality, we should be growing and healing. Therefore, I say,

The only way to TEACH is through love.

I love my homophobic neighbor.
I love my racist neighbor.
I love my sexist neighbor.
I love my neighbor who hates me.
I love my neighbor who voted for amendment one.
I love my neighbor, and will continue to love my neighbor no matter how he or she (or whoever in between) votes.

If we’re preaching of love for all, we absolutely have to keep this in mind. A failure of empathy on our part makes us no stronger or wiser than our opposition.

This amendment will be challenged, and it will reach the Supreme Court, where the same people who overturned Prop 8 in California will find our amendment unconstitutional, too. This will set a precedent for other states and our nation will come to an impasse, where we cannot continue to ignore this, but in fact, must make it a national issue, not a state-by-state one. I have faith. In the meantime…

like a beacon

To all the people who are “ashamed” to live in North Carolina, to the people who are “getting the hell out of here as soon as possible,” here’s what I have to say to you:

Do you know where you are from? This is the Tarheel State, damnit. Robert E. Lee said during the Civil War that North Carolina men “fought like they had tar on their heels.” They didn’t flee; they didn’t even flinch. They stood their ground proudly and bravely. Live up to your honor. This is just a small stepping stone on the path of our fight, a fight you’ll want to say that you were a part of. Running off won’t solve anything, so stand your ground because you know you’re right.

“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours. -Cesar Chavez”

Don’t lose faith, we can only gain supporters from here. No one is going back to believing in only traditional marriage. We are opening peoples’ eyes. It is a slow process, but it is worth it. I love North Carolina enough to stay and fight.

First, what is a polite, not-too-insulting way to tell your partner that he should really wash up before putting his manly package near my face? “Honey, your junk smells like ass” could come across as insulting. By the time he’s suggesting it, I feel like asking for it would be a mood-killer, so I end up giving head that I don’t like. Which isn’t really a satisfactory way of doing things.

And second, I have TMJ and I’m neurotic and my jaw tends to really tighten up when I’m stressed. And regardless, I can’t open my mouth all that wide most of the time. This makes putting a penis in my mouth difficult. Usually, I don’t get much past the tip. I have better luck with the balls, honestly. Do you have any other suggestions besides, well, licking it like a Popsicle?

- Jawbreaker (sorry I had to)

A: (If we could give you extra points for giving yourself a nickname, we totally would!)

You’re completely right that giving head you don’t enjoy is not a good way of doing things. You’re also right that saying something like, “Ew, your bits smell really gross!” could make him feel hurt and self-conscious. Suggesting he wash up before you hook up may seem like a mood-killer — but giving blow jobs you don’t like is a mood-killer for you!

You could either try to make it something sexy (jumping in the shower together before returning to bed or wherever you like to do it), or just be honest but tactful. You could say something like, “I love going down on you [if you do], but could you wash up really quick before we do it?” He may understand what you’re getting at, or if he asks why, you can explain that by the end of the day, things don’t smell as good (if he seems hurt or defensive, you could add that you know that’s true for everyone and it’s not anything bad about him specifically), and you want to be able to really enjoy yourself.

Hopefully, even if he feels a little embarrassed at first, he’ll recognize that rinsing off his bits before oral sex is quick and easy and benefits both of you; you’ll be able to have more fun and really enjoy what you’re doing, and that almost certainly contributes to an even more enjoyable experience for him. I’ve had this discussion before — not about smell but about certain pairs of underwear that leave behind gobs of lint — and it may not be the sexiest conversation in the world, but it is definitely sexier than me pausing to pull puffs of lint off my tongue or you getting distracted and not having fun because of the smell.

Approach it from all angles! You can suck and lick a billion different ways - this cartoon lady has obviously found something that works for her! Image from The Guide to Getting In On (goofyfootpress.com).

Now, onto the second half of your question! Blow jobs are one of my favorite things to do because there’s so much opportunity for creativity — you can do so much more than just putting a dick in your mouth and sucking on it, and you can definitely still give a blow job that you both enjoy even if you can’t get much past the tip. Here are some moves that have worked well for me:

• Thinking of it as a Popsicle might feel silly, but licking can be really great. The frenulum — the wrinkly spot right below the head — is often very sensitive in a good way, so licking up and down but pausing to focus on that spot usually gets me a good response.
• You can also vary your technique when you’re licking — don’t just lick with your tongue flat but try moving it in circles, brushing it back and forth, swirling it around, etc.
• Use your hands! Nobody ever said a blow job had to be mouth only, and if somebody did say that, they were lying! You can go up and down with your hand and mouth at the same time, going only as far as you comfortably can with your mouth and moving your hand the rest of the way down, then back up to meet up with your mouth again. Try reversing it! Try moving just your hand while you hold the tip in your mouth and suck/lick/move your tongue around, or try licking the base while you jerk him off.
• Finally, if you’re into involving toys in your sexytimes, you could use a short sleeve like this one to take care of most of his cock while you focus on just the base or tip.

So, ultimately, there’s a lot of room for creativity when it comes to blow jobs, and figuring out what works can be a fun process for both of you (and if you find it more stressful or uncomfortable than fun, remember that this is not something you have to do, and no one should be making you feel like you have to!). Hopefully, our tips give you something to work with, but as always, we invite our fabulous and sexy readers to offer their suggestions as well. Anyone with similar experiences have advice for Jawbreaker in the comments?

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Keep the great ques­tions com­ing! (Hee.) Got a ques­tion to ask, sub­ject you’d like us to dis­cuss, or myth you’d like us to bust? You can e-mail us at FriskyFeminist@persephonemagazine.com or send us an anony­mous mes­sage via the spiffy new Ask Us! fea­ture here.

The amazingly hilarious Danny Pudi- I didn't stop laughing once during this interview. Seriously, you can hear my giggles on the recording. They're everywhere.

Heather Taylor: Before we hit the topic of awkwardness, what is your definition of confidence?

Danny Pudi: My definition of confidence would be being very comfortable with awkwardness. That’s something that I feel has been a theme in my life. One time I met up with a friend of a friend and I was wearing a really bright purple shirt and they came up to me and were like, “Hey man, what color shirt are you wearing?” and I was like, “Oh I don’t know, I think it’s orange.” Immediately I was like it’s a purple shirt. It was one of those situations where I should have probably given the guy my shirt but these are situations that we find ourselves in and it’s about making the most of them.

HT: Beyond the purple shirt incident, what was your most awkward moment and how did you handle it?

DP: I feel like I get into awkward moments constantly. A lot of them have happened with my wife and her parents. When I first met them we were going out for lunch and we were driving in the car and I was really uncomfortable and not sure what to say to my girlfriend’s parents for the first time. As we’re driving, I see a Hooters and my mind just goes on instinct, I yell “HOOTERS!” I know — what am I doing? It definitely broke the ice and I ended up marrying that girl but I don’t think we’ll ever forget the time I yelled “Hooters!” in the car.

HT: Are guys willing to tweet about embarrassing stuff that happens to them?

DP: Yeah! We’ve gotten some funny ones already. I retweeted one the other day where a gentleman said he was in an elevator and a woman laid her head on his chest and he yelled “I’m engaged!” I thought that was pretty funny. Another guy told us a story about how he showed up on a date and the date’s best friend showed up and so did the date’s parents and the best friend’s parents all to look the guy over. It’s situations like that that I find really entertaining and it’ll be fun to put into a video. They’re moments where you felt awkward and were uncomfortable about it but you knew it was probably going to be a funny story in the end and you handled it.

HT: You play Abed on Community who is no stranger to awkward moments. How would Abed “Handle It?”

DP: I think my character would say exactly what is happening. Abed is the greatest narrator and observer of human behavior and that’s so fun for me to play. For instance, if we were on a date I’d be like, “Oh Heather, your best friend’s parents are here.” And then, as Abed, I would probably tell you before, “Oh are they here to size me up? Okay I should probably stand up. Hello, Heather and best friend’s parents. I am six foot tall, 135 pounds, and a Pisces. I love being barefoot, I love running barefoot, I’m into feet. I like looking at feet. Those are some of the things that I’m into and I just want you to know that before Heather and I proceed with our date.”

BC: Oh goodness, that’s too much!

DP: [laughs] Exactly! See what I mean? But if that’s what they want to see or hear, that’s what Abed would give them.

HT: On a final Community note — any spoilers on the Greendale gang for this season?

DP: There’s been an exploration between Troy and Abed’s friendship as well as the whole group’s relationship to Greendale as a school. We start raising some questions about the gang and Greendale: how long are they gonna be there, what their ties are to it. Troy and Abed are beginning to get comfortable splitting a little bit with Troy’s future becoming a little bit more defined so you’ll see more about that. We just did a Law and Order homage episode and there’s a great video game themed episode coming up too — stay tuned!

-Heather Taylor is a brand spankin’ new writer for Persephone Magazine and shameless “Community” endorser.

One of my thrift store looks.

1. Vintage Glamor: This is what many thrifters look for. Anything with a pre-1970 aesthetic, including authentic vintage and later reproductions. True vintage pieces are a bit of a needle in a haystack. If you are a regular thrifter and you look through everything at every store, you will find some eventually. What is more common are 1930s and ’40s inspired garments from between 1975-1995, which may look incredibly authentic, but aren’t as valuable. Amazing vintage shoes are easier to come by than clothes, but they’re always for tiny sizes. Purses are also more common, but check the insides very thoroughly before buying because you never know what gunk will be inside. Furs are also popular items, if you’re not opposed to vintage fur. I just bought a mink shawl from c. 1960 for six dollars at a Goodwill. You can get amazing deals on furs. Increasingly, thrift stores are wising up and charging more for authentic vintage items, particularly those in good condition or in popular sizes. But this only seems to happen in “trendy” areas, and like I said last week, the best thrift stores are not in those sort of places anyway.

2. Granny Chic: A large percentage of items that end up in thrift stores come from dead people. Most people are old when they die. Therefore, you’re going to find a lot of stuff aimed at old ladies. You also find a lot of stuff from the early-to-mid ’70s that looks like it’s made for a granny who’s very thin and likes to show a lot of skin. Granny chic is wildly popular with hipsters, but if you don’t live in an area infested with hipsters, you can wear it and get plenty of compliments without looking like you’re thirty and have never had a job. The ideal granny dress has a floral print with lace trim and large buttons, but there are exceptions. I have two Granny rompers from the ’70s that have the granny dress feel, but are much younger and hipper. There are also blouses and skirts to be found, as well as accessories like hats, scarves, and sensible shoes. The combination of granny dress/combat boots is always tons of fun for fall and winter. In warm weather a granny dress or romper looks good with sandals, a funky belt, and dangly jewelry. It’s normal for the dress to be a bit loose, but if you find one you love that’s just way too big and you have decent sewing skills, there are many ways to convert it.

3. Shoulder Pads: Many items at thrift stores have shoulder pads, including those that best fall into other categories. I always tear them out because they aren’t my style, but a growing number of women and men seem to disagree. Many dresses, tops, and jackets you’ll find are entirely designed around shoulder pads. You take them out and the whole thing looks deflated and vaguely sad. Pretty much every thrift store in America has a polyester dress in bright pink, blue, or purple that has short sleeves, massive shoulder pads, and two buttons on the side that don’t really do anything. This look, if you absolutely must wear it, looks best with platform shoes, glitter, and neon jewelry. I would suggest attempting a modern interpretation of big hair.

4. Dorky Sweaters: Everyone in America should be legally obligated to own one dorky sweater and wear it annually. I don’t just mean Christmas sweaters; there are millions of other designs to chose from like geometric prints or over-sized flowers. They aren’t meant to fit properly, so don’t bother trying it on first. They look best with skinny jeans, fingerless gloves, and over-sized sunglasses.

5. Mall Clothes From Ten Years Ago: People buy stupid crap from the mall, and then they don’t want it anymore, so they give it away. Things the are well-designed and classic looking can make for good finds, but most of it isn’t. Usually these come from when a middle-aged soccer mom cleans out the house and takes everything no one in the family has worn for a while to the thrift store.

6. Mall Clothes From Ten Months Ago: I can’t quite explain how basically new items (not completely new and donated unsold, but those bought and then given away) end up in thrift stores so often. This is what people thrifting for purely economic reasons look for. I like things that are more quirky and unique, but who doesn’t want some normal people clothes every now and then? You will often see things that were bought for several hundred dollars just a few weeks ago.

7. My Teenager Isn’t Interested Anymore: Punk, goth, skater, hip-hop, funny t-shirts…Pretty much anything that teenagers get into and then change their minds about a few months later. Not all of it looks teeny-bopper, and even the things that do can be styled differently. I bought a black skirt covered in chains that probably came from Hot Topic for less than a dollar, paired it with a sheer black button-down shirt, black pumps, purple nails, and smokey eyes and wore it to a fashion industry even. You’ll also see “club girl” looking things that suburban teenage girls bought when their moms weren’t around and weren’t allowed to keep. That stuff does not work on anyone actually old enough to get into a club, so don’t even think about it.

8. Business Lady: Suits, button-downs, black pumps with a moderate heel! Everything you need to be a grown-up. You can find amazing deals on suits, both the traditional black ones and more interesting things like pink tweed or red Palin suits. Never buy a basic white button-down shirt new again! You’ll find dozens of them in every size and cut at the average thrift store. You’ll find everything from “lowly cubicle worker” to “Republican socialite” to “Mad Men.” Keep a special eye-out for those trendy shirts that tie at the collar.

9. Work-Out: Okay, so you don’t actually work out. Or when you do, you wear stuff you have lying around the house. But frequently, while thrifting, you’ll find amazing things like funky cut-out exercise tops that look great with skirts and boots. Or tight shorts that are practical enough to not look trashy. A great pair of sweats can be a God-send when travelling, and the best deals are at the thrift stores. Just wash them extra to get out any sweat!

10. Crap: Okay, there’s a lot of crap. Mom jeans with elastic waistbands, over-sized ’90s windbreakers, those beige slacks popular with sixty-somethings, and stuff even the most hardcore of hipsters can’t wear ironically. This stuff probably accounts for 50% of even a decent thrift store. Just put it back on the rack and move-on.

Individual items worth noting:

-Skinny belts. These are in style, and if you find one that fits your waist well, it’s a good accessory to have. Most thrift stores charge under two dollars. Look for one brown, one black, one white or off-white, and one in a metallic, as well as any bright colors you use.

-Black and white sheer button-downs. These can be incredibly useful to add a bit of sex appeal to any outfit, and you can wear them with pretty much anything. Whether you wear a little tank top, or only a bra underneath depends on how sexy you want to be. You can pull this off even if you’re not in great shape!

-Black knee-length skirt. Good for business or casual, pretty much year-round. You can find one in almost any thrift store. Keep looking until you find your size.

-White casual sundress. Prince Harry is coming to your house tomorrow, and he wants to elope to Hawaii and get married on the beach. You need to be prepared.

-Giant I-don’t-care sweatshirt. You’re going to see a movie, and the theater is freezing. But you have your giant shapeless sweatshirt in the back seat, so all is well.

-Vintage heels. Shoes nowadays are ridiculous. An older pair of heels will almost always be easier to walk-in. Anything from the old millenium is better than what they’re selling now. Buy some practical vintage heels in a neutral color for special occasions when you have to be on your feet.

Editor’s note: For everything you need to know about clothes from different eras and what to look for, check out MissWorded’s guide to vintage style. Here’s the first post in the series. 

Inspiring, and accurate. The army does a great job in instilling discipline, respect, and responsibility in its members.

“Above all, Soldiers get things done. Protecting freedom. Building a better world. And building a brighter future for themselves by learning leadership skills and developing the kind of self-confidence and self-respect that comes from serving your country.”

This is such a great philosophy, and I’ve seen it happen — kids with less-than-perfect discipline who are facing an uncertain future join the army, and through training and service, come out the other side completely changed. The potential for personal growth in the army is, without a doubt, a real draw. The army teaches young men and women self-confidence, self-respect, and perhaps more importantly:

“He or she will be challenged to accept a new sense of discipline and responsibility.”

I have seen this happen when people go away to join the army, and it is something that is extremely valuable. People should be proud of their service, and they should be proud of the personal growth that their service develops in them.

Which is why articles such as this one, highlighting the inefficiencies of Veterans Affairs when it comes to mental health, make me so upset. The article discusses the fact that 95,000 patients (about half of those seeking treatment) had to wait an average of 50 days to get a mental health appointment; this one says that hundreds of veterans had to wait an average of four years to get their full mental health benefits. From a 2008 court case of veterans against the VA:

“Shhh!” began a Feb. 13, 2008, email from Dr. Ira Katz, a VA deputy chief. “Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?”

The VA lost that court case. But their loss has recently been overturned, because of jurisdiction.

And here is where my disappointment sets in. I mean, of course it is upsetting that veterans are being treated so poorly when it comes to mental health. Because, to start out with, sending young men and women into combat does a number on their mental health. Almost 2 in 5 veterans report Post-Traumatic Stress. According to the Pew Research Center:

“These psychological and emotional problems are most prevalent among post-9/11 veterans who were in combat. About half of this group (49%) say they have suffered from PTS. And about half (52%) also say they had emotionally traumatic or distressing experiences while in the military. Of those who had these types of experiences, three-in-four say they are still reliving them in the form of flashbacks or nightmares. “

The PTSD results in all sorts of havoc:

• Soldiers diagnosed with PTSD often suffer clinical depression, hyper-vigilance, insomnia, emotional numbing, recurring nightmares, and intrusive thoughts. In many cases, the symptoms worsen with time, leaving the victims at higher risk for alcohol and drug abuse, unemployment, homelessness and suicide.
• Overwhelming feelings of guilt and sorrow surrounding personal actions or inactions, and feelings of shame and disgust, often prevent or compromise soldiers ability to function.

To back this up, the media is rife with reports of increased violent crime amongst populations of returned veterans. To compound the situation, veterans with PTSD are being sent back to war. And those in the reserve often have an even tougher battle with mental illness, because they have the same types of problems but even more issues with getting treatment.

Even without this recent court case, even if the soldiers were to be provided with better mental health options, the culture discourages treatment:

Another family member said that “seeking counseling is often seen as a weakness to a soldier in a leadership position, and is often accompanied by a negative stigma.” Others charged that commanders are still unresponsive to the needs of service members who want to seek treatment.

Each week I am overjoyed that you fly back with me into the ether as we gently facepalm our way into the realm of the political, the sublime, and the absurd (mostly the absurd), as we attempt to understand what is going on in this big, crazy world of ours. You brave, brave souls. So enough lollygagging, let’s jump right into the topics that make us swirl our brains to process the absurd and inane. You’re welcome.

I knew it

I suppose we have to get some electoral coverage in here. Ron Paul has dropped out of the 2012 electoral race (he was still running?) upsetting white, college-age dudeitarians everywhere, as the possibility of legalized weed weighed heavier than say, being a half-decent politician. Mittens Romney, while not only revealing himself to be Gul Dukat (*snort* ~ed.), has come out as a homophobic bully even in his teen years. Um, shocking? Not really, but well timed for Obama’s announcement that he does indeed support gay marriage. While I personally congratulate the president for finally catching the hell up, I’m going to make very few bones about him finally doing it. (Huffington Post, NY Times)

Greece and Spain are not feeling austerity measures. Can you blame them? The eurozone is proving, well… you be the judge. NPR reports: “In Spain, the health of the banking sector is in doubt as street opposition to painful budget cuts continues there and in other parts of Europe. Tens of thousands took to the streets in Madrid and several other Spanish cities in peaceful protests against deep budget cuts and other austerity measures.” Meanwhile, “Greek politicians tried again and failed to form a coalition government, though talks are ongoing. There is growing fear that Greece will not be able to remain in the currency union and avoid defaulting on its debts.” Oh lordy, here we go again. (NPR)

In Mexico, authorities are struggling to identify 49 mutilated bodies that were found dumped near city of Monterrey. The series of massacres is believed to be from the escalating conflict between Mexico’s two dominant drug cartels. Al Jazeera states that cartel violence has killed more than 47,500 people since President Felipe Calderon launched a stepped-up offensive when he took office in December 2006. (Al Jazeera).

Amendment One is bullshit, though I’m sure you were already very well aware. But here’s what Kenyon Farrow knows it means in the big picture. (Colorlines)

Domestic Violence numbers are on the rise and while we can definitely say that economic stress plays a tremendous role, Sady Doyle argues that the equations just ain’t that simple. (In These Times)

Kellee Terrell’s fantastic piece on why CeCe McDonald’s case is the perfect example of why systems in place fail the ones who need it the most. (The Root)

Goodbye Sarkozy, hello Hollande. Hollande became the socialist party’s replacement after their last nominee, a little gem you may know as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, decided to assault and rape Nafi Diallo, a domestic worker at a hotel he was staying at in New York City. I would like to expect more, but something about birds of a feather makes me not hold my breath. (MSNBC)

Well, my loves, that wraps up another session of the good, the bad, and the really bad. But remember, even in the worst of times, seek comfort in that which you love, that which generates good. For me, its a little bit of Bob Fosse and a little bit of rock-n-roll. So until next week you beautiful babes, are you to be shown a good time?

At Pelant’s parole hearing, his lawyer argues for him to have the ankle monitor removed. Pelant plays the contrite criminal, stating that he knows now that hacking is a serious crime and that there’s a company ready to hire him that knows all about his hacking past. Caroline Julian (speaking for the sane side of keeping the ankle monitor on) snarks that he’s not a hacker anymore, he’s a murderer. At the parole board’s questioning, Booth and Brennan speak up and show the board their evidence that he’s a person of interest in two investigations. The board seems skeptical since it’s all circumstantial, but agrees to review it anyway. Both Brennan and Booth’s phones start ringing, but they don’t realize at first that the ringtones were changed to a howling sound. Pelant looks over with his typical dead-eye expression.

Uncanny, hmm? Left screencap via bones-daily.com, right promo photo via BBC.

Seriously, can I digress and talk about Andrew Leeds’ performance as Christopher Pelant for a minute? The comparison that comes to mind (and not just because they look so similar) is to Andrew Scott’s performance as Jim Moriarty in the BBC’s Sherlock. The complete conviction to his portrayal of a sociopath who delights in creating chaos just because it’s the most interesting thing his brain can think up is a completely fascinating and terrifying thing to watch. There’s no reasoning with Pelant — he does what he does because he wants to, because it’s what passes as a challenge, and, most of all, because it’s fun to see all the puppets play their parts exactly how he wants them to do so. I really wish we had more than two episodes with him this season, though I’m glad to see they didn’t get him wrapped up neatly by the end of this episode. I don’t know how he could top what he does in this hour (with barely  half a page of dialogue, by the way), but I look forward to it with a perverse kind of glee.

Okay, back to the episode: B&B arrive on site at a wildlife reserve where a couple on an ATV found some remains when their GPS led them astray (I wonder who was behind that). There’s not much tissue left, since a pack of wolves appeared to chow on the victim. Brennan does her quick ID as male, late 30s, and stops when she notices some remodeling on a really unique fracture that looks to be about 8 years old. She double checks it and then states that she set that break: the victim is a friend of hers, Dr. Ethan Sawyer. Booth’s phone, with it’s hacked howling ringtone, rings again, leaving no doubt in our minds and Brennan’s that Pelant killed her friend.

Ethan Sawyer went to grad school with Brennan and was a mathematical genius who focused on finding patterns in systems. Unfortunately, that ended up driving him to paranoid schizophrenia. Brennan admits to Booth that she had been consulting with Ethan on the Pelant case. Booth is upset at what Pelant’s people finding out that they were consulting with someone mentally ill would do to their case, but Brennan says he was the only person she knew smarter than Pelant, so he’d have been the only person able to help. That knowledge made him extremely dangerous to Pelant. Booth says they’ll hold on to that information until they find the means and motive to lock Pelant up. Things get worse when Booth discovers that Ethan had been ranting about a demon baby that he had to kill, namely Christine, and that Brennan knew about it. While Ethan was in a locked down ward, there was a (surprise!) computer glitch that placed him on an open ward the day before he was killed. Before that, he’d had no visitors since Brennan last saw him two weeks ago; what’s more, Ethan gave her an old math book when she left.

Back at the lab, the squints are finding out some disturbing stuff of their own: Cam finds indications that Ethan was still alive when the wolves ate him. Wolves don’t eat live prey, so something must have been making him look dead. Wendell’s looking for non-wolfy stuff, but can’t find anything. He reminds himself what Dr. Brennan taught him: “Gather evidence and follow it without bias.” Hodgins asserts that Pelant made a mistake and that they’ll find it, remarking that Pelant isn’t God. Angela finds the worst discovery of all: security tapes from Ethan’s hospital showing Brennan leaving. The tapes are time-stamped the night before he disappeared. Angela has no idea how he would have hacked it and tells Brennan that her alibi is that they were at the Founding Fathers together, drinking and talking about Christine’s upcoming christening. Angela tells Brennan that she knows she wouldn’t kill anyone and Brennan asserts that, under the right circumstances, she knows she could. “Like someone thinking your baby is a demon and wanting to kill her?” Angela asks. The pieces fall together and Brennan realizes that Pelant is framing her.

Brennan shows the footage to Booth and all he can say is, “This is bad.” There’s four hours of Brennan’s time that are unaccounted for. Max (who’s put Christine to bed), comes down and tells them they need a plan for what will happen if the evidence continues to stack up against them. Booth tells him that they can handle this and Max, to his credit, knows not to press the issue anymore right then. But stack up the evidence does. Straight, precise marks on the victim’s bones are revealed to be cuts through all the minor veins and arteries, leaving him to bleed out, attracting the wolves. With Pelant having no medical or anatomy training, how would this get connected to him? Wendell finds a needle mark in the bone, with a trace of whatever drug was used to subdue Ethan still inside. When Hodgins runs it, it’s from a curare plant, used as anesthesia in the ’40s, a substance that leaves the body quickly (so it wouldn’t be on the tox screen). The plant is really rare and the person would have to distill it themselves from the plant. Which Hodgins happens to have two of and which he lent Brennan two weeks ago. The team is devastated, but Wendell says they can’t ignore the fact that someone threatened her kid. Cam backs him up and says that they have to do everything by the book so that they’re above reproach. Angela can’t believe what they’re saying and storms off. Angela goes to tell Booth about the new evidence. Booth starts trying to think of how they can counteract the evidence when he gets a phone call from Brennan saying that Pelant has her and she’s locked in his bathroom. It is obviously a totally faked call, but Booth is under some stress, so he heads to Pelant’s place where Pelant lets himself be roughed up quite a lot before pointing out that Booth should maybe check with Brennan, who is at home when Booth calls. Caroline scolds him for that play (of course, there’s no record of Booth receiving the initial call), and tells him that because of it, Pelant’s parole was granted and he’s free to go. More bad news: Booth and Brennan are both off the case. Agent Flynn is replacing him and takes Booth’s badge and gun. As he leaves, he reminds Flynn that, “With a guy like Pelant, nothing is the way it seems.”

Angela goes to see Brennan (against the rules), determined to look at every computer trail and figure out how to stop Pelant or point this back at him. From his library records, he reads a lot… like, A LOT. 80 books in 3 months. His PPV bill shows a ton of movies. No one could read all those books and watch all those movies in that time. Agent Flynn arrives at the house with a warrant to search Brennan’s house and car. Booth notices that the house number is slightly off. Oops, better fix that technicality. Flynn says the Prius is on the street, so public property, so give him the keys. Oops, Booth lost them… guess you gotta tow it. When they get rid of Flynn, Booth tells Angela and Brennan to pack up everything they have on Pelant and tells Angela to get to the library to check out those books.

All the awards for Tamara Taylor, guys. Screencap via bones-daily.com

The dominos keep falling as Sweets is kicked off the case by Agent Flynn and Caroline (who arranged the typo on the warrant) is booted because a money transfer has been made from Brennan’s account to hers. Before she’s kicked off, though, she gives Brennan a heads up that an arrest warrant is imminent and it’ll be better for her if she turns herself in. The final nail in the case has come down… the hair samples in Brennan’s truck match Ethan. Cam is crying over the results as Hodgins asks her what she’s going to do. “I’m going to get myself together and do the right thing… either you believe in the system or you don’t,” she asserts. Cam believes in the system, as much as it hurts. Brennan and Booth spend a moment with their baby as Max comes over and tells them that they have to make a run for it. Booth admits that he’s been thinking about it, but knows it will make her look more guilty. Max explains that they need to get off the grid, “Computers are the system and this guy runs the computers.” He know what it’s like when the system turns on you. He leaves, but Brennan tells Booth that she wants to have Christine christened before she’s arrested, and that she wants to be there (he had previously been okay with her not attending because religion is his thing).

Thats... a lot of saliva. Screencap via bones-daily.com

It’s not over, yet, though, as Brennan realizes (FINALLY!) that Ethan was trying to send her a message through an inscription in the book he gave her. Cam and Hodgins go to Ethan’s room in the hospital, looking for a message in a triangle. Cam pulls out the infared and finds invisible writing on the wall. Ethan left a message in saliva. Angela doesn’t have any idea what the code is, and when she calls Brennan to tell her, Brennan thanks her for believing in her and tells her she loves her. She hangs up and goes into the church for the christening, after Max gives her some fatherly advice to breathe, take a minute, and forget about everything but Booth and Christine.

A montage takes us through the following events: Booth looks so happy to have Christine christened. Pelant enters B&B’s house. Angela scans books in and finds some code in an RFID tag. Pelant replaces the alarm clock in their bedroom with what looked like, earlier, a homemade bomb. He takes pictures of Christine’s crib, smiles at the security camera. Christine is splashed with holy water and Booth looks happier than I’ve ever seen him. Oh, this is all going to come crashing down, isn’t it? Angela finds Caroline and explains how Pelant changed the code in the RFID tags to insert viruses into the system, but it’s too little to keep Brennan from being arrested. Angela blames Cam, but Caroline protests that she’s the only one who didn’t do exactly what Pelant expected and that’s why the Squints are still on the case, which is exactly what Pelant fears.

At the church, Booth goes to get the car. Brennan stops him and tells him that she loves him and doesn’t want him to think that Christine is the only reason they’re together. Oh, Booth, sweet naive, Booth, how are you surprised by what happens next? Booth leaves and Max pulls up and tells Brennan, “Let’s go.” She buckles Christine in her car seat as Max reiterates that she’s to use cash only stay off the grid, wait for him and if he’s not there in three days, go to the next meet spot. He tells her he’s right about this. Meanwhile, Booth’s car won’t start and he seems to realize what’s going on just in time to see Brennan driving away. He grabs Max and asks him where they’re going, but Max won’t tell him. Booth wants to be with his family, but Max tells him he has to stay in the system, stay alive, get the bastard and bring his family home. Max will keep the girls safe and alive in the meantime. Booth sits on the church steps alone as Brennan drives. Even Christine looks sad.

I know, Christine... I know. Screencap via bones-daily.com

This was probably one of the most thematic and foreshadow-tastic episodes of Bones that we’ve ever had. From the push and pull on our heroes as to whether they follow the book and trust in the system or do what they know is true, to the frequent dissertations from Booth that Pelant shouldn’t change their lives, to the montages juxtaposing what the good guys are doing with what Pelant’s up to — every action in this episode meant something. It was also a refreshing change of pace from a show that’s gotten pretty formulaic. Many of you have commented that you can pick the killer pretty easily each week. This episode turned that formula on its head, questioning how you know who the killer is when all the evidence points elsewhere. Just writing this recap was like going through the emotional roller coaster of the episode all over again. While the entire season was choppy, this finale was definitely satisfying.

What did you think?

I’m not sure if I’ve done this LTP before (I know I asked this when we were doing “7 Questions” each week) but even if I have, it’s worth doing again.

What’s your favorite joke? If you can’t think of a joke, share your favorite funny picture. Let’s all ring in Wednesday with some belly laughs, shall we?

Can you finish the lyrics below?

1. “Went to a party last Saturday night, didn’t get laid, got in a fight, uh-huh…”
2. “Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick, the one that makes me scream, she said, the one that makes me laugh, she said…”
3. “You’ll never know how great a kiss can feel, till you’re stopped at the top of a Ferris wheel…”
4. “The castle started spinning, or maybe it was my brain, I can’t tell u what she did 2 me…”
5. “I wish it were Sunday, cause that’s my fun day…”
6. “My sister looks cute in her braces and boots…”
7. “Cupid, if your arrow make her love strong for me, I promise…”
8. “The future only belongs to the future itself, and the future is…”
9. “Don’t call it a comeback…”
10. “Who said that every wish would be heard and answered…”
11. “Love, is gentle as a rose, and love can…”
12. “I want your drama, the touch of your hand, I want your leather studded…”
13. “Give me one reason to stay here…”

Leave your answers in the comments, and tell me one of the songs you know by heart. What lyrics thrill you?

Jormungand ep 5

Koko has an older brother! Although, he could have a better name than Casper. Now I see a bubbly ghost when I think of him. Also, he and Koko were born in containers at sea? What kind of parents did they have?

This is Casper and he does look a bit like a ghost

Also, why do all arms dealers have female bodyguards? Casper’s bodyguard is called Chiquita. And it seems that Jonah — well, Jonathan apparently — knows both of them. Screaming their names and trying to kill them is somehow telling.

Flashback to three months ago, when Casper first met Jonah. I wonder why a general asks for orphans under 15 as reinforcements… The answer is simple: to beats them and use them as expendable items (a.k.a. minefield probing).

I’m starting to like Jonah, killing all the soldiers in the camp was just badass. Too bad Casper showed up right after and dumped him in a container with only water for days. Chiquita looks a lot like Valmet without her mask, a small bit of back story there. Like something that happened in Africa, maybe?

I love this episode, lots of back story, lots of characters…almost no bullets.

Fate/Zero ep 18

Guess who this is

You know, if I didn’t see the Fate/Zero logo at the start, I would have wondered what I was watching. It’s another flashback episode, but Kiritsugu just doesn’t look like his adult self. His Dad, though, looks a lot like him.
I didn’t expect this kind of flashback. Well, I did expect to get some explanation as to why Kiritsugu is who he is, but not this. Zombies everywhere (well, Dead Apostle, and the translation says “Vampires,” but really, zombies!) and the one responsible was his father. Whom he ends up killing. He also gets picked up by a badass woman called Natalia who becomes his mentor in the art of kicking ass and taking names.

Unfortunately, now I want a Fate show based on Natalia, the Mage Association and the Church’s Executor against different baddies and not something on the Grail War. You hear me, TypeMoon!

Also, talk about quality animations this week! Or it might just be the beach, sun and sea that make me say this.

Eureka Seven AO ep 5

The Triton got to base and everybody disembarks, including the stowaways.

One of the stowaway, he encountered a lady's knee

Ao also gets a check-up and the conclusion is that he is a mutant. He gets a special retinal nerve that allows him to see a wider light spectrum. While he’s under scrutiny, Noah is having fun escaping everybody in the base, though. For a Sloth, he sure runs fast.

So Generation Blue might not be “good guys.” They might actually cause Scub Coral to pop-up to give themselves jobs. Also, seems like the Chairman is related to Fleur; they have the same surname: Blanc. I guess we will get a “Papa, what did you do?” at some point.

Also, GB have more IFO team and spaceships. We get to meet the Medon and the Goldilocks team in this episode. They are all teenage girls who pilot religious-themed mecha (Gloria, Requiem, Credo). Poor Ao. Hopefully, it doesn’t turn into a harem show too fast. The chairman also hired the three thugs from Okinawa. Well, they are not really thugs, I just forget their names every week (Gazelle, Pippo and Han).

The Goldilocks sortie doesn’t end to well, so the Pied Piper team sends in reinforcement. GB recolored the Mark I and registered it under Nirvash. Ao was quite happy.

This was a classic “welcome to base” episode. These haven’t changed since the ’70s. The only difference is that there seems to be quite a bit of history between the Nirvash and Generation Blue.

Accel World ep 6

Taku and Haru told Chiyu everything…offscreen. We missed all the book throwing and slapping. I’m sad now. She also stopped talking to them, as well. Go Chiyu, show the boys how the world works.

Of course, my hope above for Chiyu crashed after five minutes. She asked them to bring her all the flavors of ice cream and then proceeded to eat all of them (well, a third of them; she shared the rest).

In the meantime, Taku and Haru are doing tag-team matches to bring Silver Crow to level 2. Random fight is random, especially when you are just trying to end the fight by timeout and not proper fighting. People just want to fight against the flying avatar.

God, this game has nasty rules. Leveling up to level 2 eats 300 points, but it allows you to level up as soon as you get them. That mean if you are not careful you can end up “losing” by reverting to zero. Haru end up with eight point left and need to seek a “bouncer.” There’s a Burst Linker that likes to team up with players with low points called Aqua Current. Taku proposes that Haru hire her to help him get some points back. That bodyguard is also level 1. Sound like an eternal level 1 player.

The episode ended on a cliffhanger: Taku going to visit Snow Black and moving into Burst Link mode for a fight. Poor Taku.

"If you had read the essay and it wasn't about you, do you think would've liked it?"

I have reached a happy place in my attitude toward both the show itself and that I can’t stop watching it. First, I finally accept that the show is supposed to be funny. It’s not a biopic or a documentary on today’s 20-somethings — it’s a sitcom, and since it’s on HBO, it’s a sitcom with boobs and penis pics and sex. What’s not to love, right?

Second, since I’m old enough to be these girls’ mother older sister — okay, FINE, my kids are 23 and 25, so I could be Hannah’s mom — the point is, given my age, I can’t watch this show without wanting to point out the mistakes I see these young women making and I’m not going to feel bad about it anymore. Kudos to you, Lena Dunham, for creating characters with whom I want to engage, even if that sometimes means I just want to slap some sense into them.

Raise your hand if you knew — KNEW! — that Marnie would manage to guilt Charlie into taking her back only so she could then break up with him. The conversation about their breakup was the first truly adult one (“adult” as in grown up, not pornographic) I’ve heard so far, but her begging centered around “take me back/don’t break up with me” and not “I suddenly know how much I really love you.” Charlie, bless his heart, is a mushy ball of clinging, smothering need and I could almost see the light bulb go off over her head when she realized during their sexual encounter that no, she really did not want to be in a relationship with him. I felt bad for him; he’d done the right thing, the hard thing, only to get sucked back into her web so that she could be the one to deliver the killing blow. (I’d also like him to build me a set of those descending shelves, but that’s beside the point.)

Is this where the party is?

Speaking of sticky webs — I’ve been arguing that Jessa is way too smart to end up screwing Creepy Dad, but then she goes and has sex with Creepy Hipster Dude, so my argument is shot. At least Shoshanna’s bed finally saw some action, even if Sho had to watch said action from the closet. (Someone smarter than I am can speak to the imagery of virginal Shoshanna watching uninhibited Jessa having sex in her bed, and on the window sill, while she huddles behind the safety of drawn curtains.)

As for Hannah, I, well, I don’t know what I think. Calling her boss out on his sexual harassment by coming on to him was hysterical, although I’m still not sure if she meant to actually have sex with him or just shame him into changing his behavior. But the thing with Adam — what am I supposed to take away from that scene? Was that really Hannah feeling a little powerful for a change? Juxtaposed against that pitiful image from the first time we saw them in bed together, she certainly seemed more sincere letting her disdain spew than she did tentatively parroting his pathetic pedophilia fantasies. Did we just witness her discovery of a sexual identity she didn’t know she had? Or was she, again, playing a role solely for Adam’s benefit? I don’t know, and I can’t decide how I feel about that scene until I have the answer to that question.

"...it is okay to act on this fantasy because I am gross and so are you."

So, my pretties, what do think? Will Hannah be investing in leather and whips? Were you surprised at the Marnie/Charlie twist? Where can I get that lipstick Jessa was wearing? Inquiring minds want to know.

What does it all mean??

You may find your self looking at your camera dial and sometimes wondering what it all means. Most of us understand that “Auto” means Auto Mode—the happy place where your camera does all the thinking for you. It adjusts your settings, it focuses for you, and your photos come out crispy! But what are all those other settings for? We’re going to focus today on the ones labeled M, A, and S (we’ll save P for later), and when I’m through with you, you should have enough of the basics to get out with your camera and try setting up photos all on your own without the help of your camera’s digital brain! Scary? Nah! You can do this! Ready?

For starters, let’s identify what these settings mean. The ones with little picture icons are quick settings pre-programmed in your camera for specific situations such as portraits, landscapes, macro, sports, night photos, and bright lights. While these are great tools for beginners (and honestly, even the pros still use ‘em), they aren’t always the perfect option every time. You might find that portraits come out too dark, macros are too bright, night shots are WAY too dark (even if it says you can take pictures of stars in this mode), and the sports option always turns out blurry people. So how can you fix it? Your best option is to learn how to set your camera settings yourself so you can adjust your camera to your needs (rather than fitting situations to your camera—sounds silly) which is why you need those other “letter” settings on the camera dial!

Technically what a shutter looks like.

The first dial mode you need to know about is Shutter “S” Priority Mode. Inside every camera is a shutter. The shutter is a little sliding window that opens and closes with the press of the button (also known as the “shutter button” or “shutter release button”), and it’s during this open period that your camera records information from the light it receives. Think of it this way: if the curtains are closed in your room, it’s dark and you can’t see anything, but the moment you open the curtains, you can see everything and make out detail in the smallest of things. The camera is just like your eye; it needs light to “see” so it’s “brain” can receive and record information, and like your eye, if the shutter or the curtain closes, no more information can be received.

So what is shutter priority mode and why is it important? We know that we can control when the shutter opens and when it closes (easy, just the push of a button!) but we can also control how fast it opens and how fast it closes. Think of it this way: if you open and close the curtain really fast, will your eye receive enough light to see much? Maybe, that all depends on how much light is outside. If it’s midnight, no, you won’t see much of anything. But if it’s noon and the sun is shining directly into the room, you might see a lot. Now what if you open it for a long time; what happens? If it’s dark out, the moon might be just bright enough that over 30 seconds your eyes adjust and you can see everything in the room. But if it’s midday, the sun might be too bright and hurt your eyes with the curtain wide open. Same thing with the camera: if it’s dark out, you need the shutter to be open longer; if it’s bright out, you need the shutter to be open shorter. The key is balance. You need to manage that little window of time to match the light conditions—long for dark, short for bright. Which is where the mode comes in: the shutter priority mode does exactly what it says it does; it lets you set the shutter speed as priority number one and the camera adjusts everything else to meet the situation.

Next question: how do you know what the right speed is? I found a couple very handy charts to help explain:

Courtesy of ephotozine.com

But shutter priority isn’t your only customizable option—you can also try Aperture ”A” Priority Mode. Aperture is how wide your shutter (or the curtains) open. If you pull back the curtains all the way, lots of light will come into the room. If you only pull them open an inch, little light will come into the room. So what should you do at  night—pull the curtains wide open or barely open? And during the day, wide open or barely open? Like the shutter, this is mode is going to determine how much light and information your camera’s little digital brain receives and ultimately produce either really dark (under exposed) or really bright (over exposed) photos. In aperture priority mode, you choose the aperture (small number means big window, big number means small window—confusing, no?) and your camera does the rest of the work, setting the shutter for you and focusing the camera. Here’s a good diagram to demonstrate how the two, shutter and aperture, work together:

Courtesy of Silverstrandphoto.wordpress.com.

Courtesy of Theverge.com.

Side question: the diagram talks about depth of field on the aperture side, what is it? We talked about this one before in a Picture This article. Basically, depth of field is how much of the photo is in focus and whether the background is blurred or in detail. Check out this guide to DoF which shows you the effects of different apertures on your photos as well as how aperture effects lighting in photos when a constant shutter speed is sustained.

So now you know about shutters and apertures, what else is there to know? Lots! But now you know enough to start trying settings out on your own! If you’re feeling brave and want to try setting both aperture and shutter settings (ie. going independent style and giving auto mode the ol’ heave-ho), you can try using Manual “M” Mode. In this mode, everything is manual—the focus, the shutter, the aperture, and lots more! You can have a play around in M mode trying out all different setting to look for the right fit. Here are a few really awesome tutorials that I HIGHLY recommend for trying out settings and learning more about your camera:

An SLR camera simulator tutorial that explains aperture, shutter and ISO settings as it walks you through your options.

SLR camera simulator that lets you set aperture, shutter, distance, tripod, lighting and focal length.

And as a bonus, there is also a composition simulator that gives you pointers on how to frame your photos.

One last guide to help you on your way: when you look into your view finder, you will see a series of numbers along the bottom of the viewfinder. These numbers help you know what the settings of your camera are. If you don’t know how to set your shutter or aperture, refer first to your camera’s manual. It’s very likely that these settings are changed by turning a wheel dial (sometimes next to the shutter button, sometimes on the back panel) but some cameras need to be changed through the camera’s menu options on the LCD screen. When you’ve figured it out, you’ll see the numbers appear in your viewfinder.

Courtesy of Spectrumstudios.com.au

You should note that the viewfinder has at the bottom a shutter speed of 20 and an aperture of f3.5. Most cameras also have an exposure scale and an ISO display (among other things) but don’t worry about those for now—we’ll get to them soon! But knowing that you can see your settings while looking through your viewfinder is really helpful and when you get good and play around a bit, you’ll find that you can also change those setting while looking through the viewfinder! Nifty, eh?

So your assignment this week is to try taking off the training wheels and going manual—either with Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, or Manual Mode. Getting a good photo takes practice and I wouldn’t feel discouraged if you don’t turn out a masterpiece (I’m still learning a lot about shooting in manual and honestly, a lot of my manual photos are crap!), so don’t worry about posting your photo here unless you want to. You can shoot anything you want this week—it’s open season! (Pun totally intended!) But please do come back and tells us about your experience in the comments. We’d love to hear your thoughts, help with your questions, and celebrate your successes! You’ve got two weeks to work on this assignment. Are you ready? I am! Let’s go hunting, er, shooting, er, take some photos!

(Image: The Bigger Picture, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from krossbow's photostream)

As we’ve discussed before. in your day to day life, the things that bring you up and drag you down are the little things. A compliment here, an tactless criticism there; a bright morning to make you smile or to give you a migraine because you forgot your sunglasses; a free movie pass one day and a parking ticket the next. Our lives are a constant roller coaster of emotion in some ways, with great things happening but a drop ready to happen just around the corner. A lot of people almost feel a sense of dread when too many good things start happening in their life, the feeling of waiting for that drop is something you’re probably familiar with. I know I am.

So even though finding joy in the little things is a good tactic to bring more positivity into your life, sometimes it’s good to check in and take a look at the big picture. Step back and look at your life from an outside perspective: See the things that you’re proud of, that you enjoy and are passionate about, see the way they make you feel, see the people around you that love you and support you in what you love, see the ways in which you are happy and content with your life. It’s a challenge, and if you’re in an especially low place, it might be impossible, so save it for another day. But if you feel up to it, challenge yourself to find at least one Big Picture view that makes you happy.

This Week’s Challenge

In doing some reading on this week’s topic, I found an interesting allegorical tale about looking at the big picture. It’s called The Three Stonecutters.

One day a traveller, walking along a lane, came across 3 stonecutters working in a quarry. Each was busy cutting a block of stone. Interested to find out what they were working on, he asked the first stonecutter what he was doing. “I am cutting a stone!” Still no wiser the traveller turned to the second stonecutter and asked him what he was doing. “I am cutting this block of stone to make sure that it’s square, and its dimensions are uniform, so that it will fit exactly in its place in a wall.” A bit closer to finding out what the stonecutters were working on but still unclear, the traveller turned to the third stonecutter. He seemed to be the happiest of the three and when asked what he was doing replied: “I am building a cathedral.”

The article equates this tale to how to see the big picture and be an effective leader, but I think this moral can be applied to anyone. This week’s challenge is to look at your life like the third stonecutter. What are you doing? What is your big picture goal? What will the end result of your day to day toil be?

This Week’s Mantra

“Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.” – Buddha

If you want a reminder of your mantra for the next week, feel free to click the image above to download the full-size version suitable for desktop wallpapers, printing, or framing.

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional or mental health expert, and there are problems that positivity cannot overcome, so please do not take this advice in lieu of a doctor’s care.

Not all challenges will be relevant to everyone, so I welcome you to come and go as you please and take from each challenge what works for you! Please make sure to share your thoughts in the comments!

It is out of a Self magazine article from a few years ago, but I still make it now and then. You can very easily double the recipe if you want to make it for more than two people. Or, if it’s just for you, you can have one serving for dinner and then pack up the rest for lunch tomorrow! Who knew that being lazy could save so much time?

Servings: 2

• 4 tsp olive oil
• 2 tsp Red wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp dried basil
• a pinch dried mint
• a pinch salt
• 4 sliced toasted whole-wheat bread (cut in cubes)
• 4 chopped plum tomatoes
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced red onion
• 6 oz chunk-light tuna
• romaine lettuce

Mix first 5 ingredients. Toss with bread, tomatoes, onion, and tuna. Place on a bed of lettuce.

You can always add different ingredients to the recipe (like CHEESE!), or you can omit items, like the tuna fish if you’re a vegetarian, the bread itself if you’re watching your carbs or have a gluten sensitivity, or the onions if you don’t want stinky breath. You can also play around with the dressing blend until it’s to your liking. And if you grow tomatoes in your garden, this is a perfect use for them!

So if any of you try it, let me know. How was it? Did you make any changes to it, and if so, what were they so your fellow Persephoneers can try and see if they like it, too?

Everyone’s favorite science story last week was, of course, the farting dinosaurs. Extrapolating from the digestive habits of present-day large plant-eaters, researchers were able to estimate that the giant sauropods like Apatosaurus who lived 150 million years ago released about 573 million tons (520 million metric tonnes) of methane per year, which likely contributed to the very warm climate of the day (temperatures averaged 18° F warmer than today). This story was also the source of my favorite bad science article of the week, in which Fox News claimed that the farts of 150 million years ago were more responsible for dinosaur extinctions that the asteroid of 65 million years ago. I’m sure the warmer climate was detrimental to some species even as it allowed others to flourish, but no. They lived for another 85 million years. (Also, the picture they used didn’t even include any sauropods. Looks like a T. Rex eating an Ankylosaur.) Sigh. Ironically, on the same day the New York Times covered a new study that hoped to settle once and for all whether the asteroid was, in fact, to blame. It was inconclusive, showing that while some species were already on the decline in the 12 million years prior to the impact, others were doing just fine. So for now, looks like we’re sticking with the asteroid as the best explanation.

Remind me to stay upwind of this fella.

Going swimming in any lakes this summer? Don’t pee in the water. Not just because it’s gross, but because urinating swimmers may be to blame for a large fish die-off at a lake near Hamburg, Germany. The pee itself doesn’t harm the fish, but rather feeds algae growth that sucks up oxygen from the water.

Underwater volcanoes can grow (and collapse) faster than anyone had previously suspected. A research vessel mapping the South Pacific happened to measure the Monowai seamount north of New Zealand mere days before a 5-day-long eruption was detected. When the ship returned about two weeks after the initial measurements, they found that a massive section on the side had collapsed in a landslide, and the peak had grown by an astonishing 79.1 meters (nearly 260 feet). That’s the third-fastest growth ever measured, behind only Vesuvius and Mount St. Helens.

For the first time, seismometers were able to definitively measure the earth-shaking effects of a cloud-to-ground lightning strike. A tree right next to an earthquake observatory in Germany was struck and exploded as a researcher watched. A special seismometer attuned to small ground movements was able to pick up four seismic spikes in less than half a second; the lightning striking the tree, the following thunderclap, the explosion of the tree (probably from sap being superheated and turned to steam), and the shockwave in the air following the explosion.

A rare (and awesome) calico lobster is moving to the Biomes Marine Biology Center in Rhode Island after the kitchen staff at Jasper White’s Summer Shack restaurant in Cambridge, Mass. decided it was too pretty to cook. It’s estimated that only 1 in 30 million lobsters have that coloring.

You fancy, huh? Image from Tony LaCasse at the New England Aquarium

Many of us may have noticed this in our own yards this year, but researchers have now proven that global warming is causing plants to flower earlier, and much quicker than had been predicted by older models. Current observations show flowers appear 5-6 days earlier each year for every degree Celsius rise in average temperatures. Laboratory models failed to account for other changes such as rainfall that would also be affected by the warmer temperatures.

Analysis of the DNA of species in the cyprus family of trees has given new insight into their evolution after the split-up of the Pangaea supercontinent. Of the two major subfamilies, one occurs mostly on the present-day areas of what was once Laurasia, while the other is confined to the former Gondwana. While the supercontinent split’s effects have previously been studied in several animal species, this was the first study of how plants evolved in the aftermath.

There’s good news on the extinction front for once. New analysis shows that prior claims that we lose three species an hour or up to 150 a day were based on bad assumptions (and worse math). Increasing the size of a habitat leads you to find new species, but decreasing it doesn’t necessarily kill every member of a species. We also don’t know how many species even exist or at what rate they go extinct through no fault of humans, making it even harder to quantify the damage done by global warming and encroaching on habitats.

Potentially awesome news for anyone still sad about Pluto’s demotion to dwarf planet: There may yet be a ninth planet lurking in the outer reaches of our solar system. No one’s spotted anything lurking beyond Neptune and Pluto yet, but the erratic orbits of some objects in the Kuiper Belt suggest that something with a pretty big gravitational pull is out there.

The coolest picture of the week comes to us courtesy of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It managed to capture three twisters on the surface of Mars. If you have any 3D glasses, the image below is even cooler. For more 3D Martian images, check out the image gallery of the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) project.

These are too fucking cool!

Often, Atheism is defined more as an absence of religion than an active belief — I can’t count the number of friends I’ve known who cautiously identified as Atheist because they couldn’t say “I believe in God.” The more internet-savvy eventually progressed to calling themselves Agnostic, but still others complained of not quite feeling represented by the outright rejection of God, or felt the whole question was stupid, or had ideas outside of saying “Yes” or “No.” So I give to my friends this guide, in the hopes it might attach a word to a floaty, irritating concept on the edge of the mind.

All of the beliefs I’m outlining below are either overlapping ideas, subcategories or mis-categorized concepts separate from Atheism. They run the gamut from agreeing God exists to refuting it outright, but all have at their heart the same basic end result — a lack of worship of God, or a refutation of the basic traits regularly assigned to it. It’s, as always, up to you guys to argue over the fine print.

So, friend, tell me, what’s the problem?

“It’s not that I don’t necessarily believe God exists, it’s just that it doesn’t affect my morality. I just don’t care!”

You sound like an Apatheist. Apatheism (a simple portmanteau of apathy and atheism) is the essential disregard for the question of God’s existence. Apatheists acknowledge that God has neither been proven or disproven as a being, and additionally, may believe that if a God does exist, it clearly has little interest in humanity. Either way, the basic thrust of Apatheism is that God’s existence should have little effect on morality. For an Apatheist, it would make no difference if God existed or not — their morality would remain the same.

Apatheism should not necessarily be dismissed as a lazy mindset — many Apatheists believe that the question of God’s existence has caused untold and unnecessary bloodshed over the thousands of years of human civilization, and that, if we all just stopped giving a rat’s arse, we wouldn’t have to burn each other quite so much over it — they’re secularists, or they think earthly morality is a more pressing concern and that Apatheism is actually morally preferable to caring too much. This is, naturally, paraphrased.

An Apatheist at the End of the World: Oh, God? He’s over there, judging stuff…or not. Monopoly?

“This God guy sounds like a bit of a dick, to be honest. And anyway, why does being omniscient automatically make you worthy of worship?”

Seems like we’ve got a Misotheist on our hands, or maybe even a Naytheist. Misotheism is the belief that God or Gods is/are evil or (less strongly) flawed or fundamentally negative for humans. Misotheists argue, essentially, that God is a mass-murdering psychopath who demands worship and grovelling from its far weaker subjects. Naytheism, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily claim that God is evil but still refuses to worship it. For a Naytheist, the idea of worship is inherently bizarre — akin to asking ants to worship us and then burning them when they don’t. Some Naytheists express a dilemma; any God worth worshiping wouldn’t demand worship, and any god that demands worship isn’t worth worshiping. The end result is no worship. A Naytheist could look God in the eye and would still refuse to worship him/her.

Some Misotheists, for the record, DO believe in worship — but it’s worship of propitiation, staving off the wrath of an evil God. It’s debatable to what extent every religion has a sprinkling of Misotheism. Neither Misotheism or Naytheism deny the existence of a God — Misotheism relies on it, in fact, while Naytheism is similar to Apatheism in that it doesn’t really make very much of God’s presence.

A Misotheist At the End of the World: OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD RUN
A Naytheist: *eyeroll* As if that’ll help.

“Who is this God guy, anyway? What are we even arguing about? Where the hell are my keys?”

You might be interested in Ignosticism, the belief that our concept, our working model of God, is fundamentally riddled with errors, unfalsifiable, and possibly even self-contradictory. An Ignostic questions how we can debate God’s existence when we can’t seem to agree on how to categorize, identify or conceptualize God. Ignostics don’t just question the existence of God, they question the very concept of God — to the extent that without a falsifiable model, the term “God” as well as the question “Does God Exist” are both essentially meaningless.

An Ignostic At the End of the World: Yeah, but what does rapture even mean?

“Religions are dicks. I mean, I might even believe in God, but they are dicks.”

Say hello, Antireligion. This one’s pretty straightforward, and often (though by no means always) dovetails with broader Secularism. Antireligion is the idea that religious entities are inherently or expressly negative to society or the human condition. Antireligion can be used to mean opposition to organized religion specifically, or derision/opposition to any belief whatsoever in the supernatural. Secularism, broadly, is the belief that religion should not have undue (“undue” is for the specific person to decide, generally) power over the government of a particular social entity. For obvious reasons, somebody who is Antireligious may be rather strongly secular at the same time.

Antireligious At the End of the World: Look what you did!
Secularist: This divine judgement had better not be mandated in the public school system.

“I don’t know, do you?”

Welcome to the school of Soft Agnosticism. Soft Agnostics profess no knowledge of God’s existence,but leave open the possibility that others may possess better knowledge. They’re the fluffy bunnies of confusion.

“I don’t know and neither do you.”

Hard Agnosticism. These guys don’t and can’t know and neither can you. Curiously wont to say “Deal with it,” as if millennia of human civilization hadn’t been dedicated precisely to dealing with that particular lack of concrete knowledge.

Soft Agnostic at the End of the World: What is going on?
Hard Agnostic: Who the hell knows?

I end my brief tour on that note — who the hell knows? It’s hard to solidify a particular belief, especially when “I don’t feel right owing fealty to a God” may be the only feeling defining you as irreligious. It’s my hope that some of these words might act as prompts to help more specifically define your sort of irreligion.

Unfortunately, not believing in God is about as complicated as believing in him/her. Have fun!

There should be a snarky caption here, but I can't. I just can't.

I’ve tried to type out a response to this three times already, and each time, I have had to start over. I know the words are there, but it is difficult for me to apply rationality and reason to something as disgusting as this crapdate. Let’s start with what is making my gut turn: this is a picture of violence. It is an image of somebody being brutalized, it is the image of somebody in pain, and it shows such a shocking imbalance of power as to cause a physical reaction in the viewer. It was for this very reason that this picture was chosen — the crapdate poster is trying to make a point that government brutalizes the people. But what the crapdate poster is actually saying is that the person who is getting brutalized is asking for it. That by virtue of their ideology, they deserve to be put through this:

“The effects of pepper spray are far more severe, including temporary blindness which lasts from 15-30 minutes, a burning sensation of the skin which lasts from 45 to 60 minutes, upper body spasms which force a person to bend forward and uncontrollable coughing making it difficult to breathe or speak for between 3 to 15 minutes. ”

It can be fatal.

By virtue of standing up for herself, she deserves pepper spray to the face, at point blank range. And what did she do to deserve this? Yelled at a police officer.

Now, the crapdate poster is trying to make a point — that increased government leads to destruction and disaster, and they are trying to make this point by using shocking visuals. But apart from the fact that it is abhorrent to suggest that somebody who yells at a police officer (for whatever reason) deserves pepper spray shot into their eyes at point-blank range, the reasoning behind it is wrong. The trick to crapdates like this, though, is that people are too shocked to think critically about it.

Occupy Wall Street protestors, for one thing, aren’t asking for more government.

“OWS’s goals include a more balanced distribution of income, more and better jobs, bank reform, a reduction in the influence of corporations on politics, and forgiveness of student loan debt.”

You know. A fair tax code so that those living in poverty don’t pay a higher percentage than Mitt Romney, for example. The solution to this might actually be a reduction of red tape. Corporations being removed from politics is a reduction of government. Getting rid of student loans— why, that’s something Ron Paul advocates. There are things that Occupiers want that go along with higher regulations, this is true — generally, higher regulations that protect the individual from corporations. But to say “Occupiers love government” is just wrong. Occupiers hate inequality. There are aspects of government, at this point, that perpetuate inequality:

“Policy also produces the rules of the game that skew benefits upward through the class structure.”

Republicans love to talk about small government, and they love when the government is small — as long as that small government benefits the rich, white men who are already in power. Small government! Except let’s add amendments to the constitution to forbid some people from getting married. Small government! Except the government should be drug-testing welfare recipients. Small government! Except women’s lives should be dictated when it comes to their uteri. Small government! Except when corporations get to form super PACs and, in essence, become a part of the government by means of their money.

Occupy Wall Street is about inequality. Since Occupiers have been associated with the left, the conclusion is that they want more government. That is just as absurd as saying that Republicans are all in favor of small government — because at this point, that isn’t where the fight lies. It isn’t about size of government, but about who gets to control that government, and who gets to benefit from that government. Occupiers want everybody to be able to benefit. The current GOP wants those who have privilege to keep their privilege. So the graphic doesn’t just fail the test of “using violence as a joke,” though, it fails the test of logic.

There is something worse, though. I wrote last week about hiding behind religion when it comes to homophobia. The person who posted this picture on my feed considers himself to be a very strong Christian — lots of church, lots of bible studies, the whole shebang. And it is just so sickening to me that somebody who puts himself forth as a follower of Christ finds this kind of — humor? schadenfreude? — to be so awesome as to warrant a reposting. The image is real. It is a real person, all of 5′ tall, being shot in the face with pepper spray because she took a stand. And the reaction is one of “she deserved it” coupled with hilarity?

I struggle with this. I have strayed far from Christianity over time, and there are times when I want to stray back. I love the ideas behind Christianity. But when those who are pushing it as The One True Way also are posting these kinds of graphics — I don’t want to be associated with that kind of thinking.

Maybe it’s just that I’m becoming too sensitive. Maybe I need to lighten up. On the other hand, maybe a re-evaluation is necessary. Right, left, republican, democrat, Christian, atheist — maybe we should define ourselves by our ability to be decent human beings instead of what box we check on the ballot. Maybe, in reality, it actually is terrible to see a picture of a compatriot who votes differently than you and think it is hilarious that they are in pain.

Tonight’s episode is titled “Dark Shadows,” which seems to be (1) a really awesome coincidence that the “Dark Shadows” movie came out this weekend, (2) a reference to the show Megan’s friend is auditioning for, and (3) an indication of the ominous tone that has settled over some of the characters or the show overall.

In the first scene, Betty’s carefully preparing her breakfast with a food scale. Later, as she goes to pick up the kids at Don and Megan’s, she has to go up to the apartment because Henry can’t find parking and the kids are slow coming down. She catches sight of Megan changing through the…window to the bedroom? It’s a very confusingly blocked scene. Anyway, the sight of Megan’s slender frame seems to stun Betty, and not in a good way. At home, she goes to the ‘fridge and sprays whipped cream in her mouth, only to run to the sink to spit it back out. At her Weight Watchers meeting, she shares that she had a “bad week” out in the world, even though she had a “good week” in there, and it’s clear she’s referring to her encounter with Megan, which she refers to as a “trying experience.” She catches Henry grilling a steak late at night and he apologizes to her and says, “I can’t eat fish five times a week,” but he says it’s nice for them to sit together with everyone asleep. Turns out that Henry’s stressed about his job, and he and Betty seem to have a nice little conversation and Betty gives him some advice that seems to be more about her when she says that “it’s so easy to blame our problems on others but we’re in charge of ourselves.” Despite that, they seem to have a sweet little moment together and he shares his steak with her after she finds out that it’s after midnight so she can “count it as tomorrow.”

Sally’s working on a family tree as Betty sorts through some of Bobby’s work and finds a drawing he did on the back of a sweet note Don left for Megan. She thinks for a bit and then asks Sally where Don’s first wife, Anna Draper, is. Sally has never heard of Anna Draper and seems disturbed that Megan didn’t tell her about Anna. Sally asks her mom about Anna, but Betty just tells her to ask Megan. Sally ends up yelling at Megan that she’s a phony, that she thought Megan was her friend, and that Megan can’t tell Don that Sally asked about Anna OR that she yelled at Megan. Trying to fix the situation, Megan gives her a brief overview of the Anna marriage without betraying any serious details. When Megan tells Don, he jumps up to call Betty and yells at Megan for saying anything. Megan yells back that Betty’s intention was obviously to cause a problem between them, and Don hangs up the phone and calms down. Sally’s in the hall, listening to the fight. Megan apologizes for saying anything, and Don apologizes to her for either yelling at her or putting her in that situation; it’s a little unclear. Don talks to Sally about Anna, and Sally figures out that Anna is the woman from California whose house they went to and who called Don “Dick.” Don admits to it and says he wishes that Sally had gotten to meet her and that Betty telling her about Anna was just to try and stir up a fight. When Betty tries to ask Sally about Anna Draper later, and when she finds out that there wasn’t a fight or an attempt at concealment, she throws a cereal box in frustration. First, she can’t turn to food for comfort and now she can’t even poison her husband’s new marriage. Quelle horreur.

Bert and Roger conspire a bit to keep some new business from the rest of the partners so that Pete can’t steal it from them. It’s for Manischewitz wine, so Bert encourages Roger to take his wife with him. When Roger points out he’s getting divorced, Bert kind of goes “No, I meant Jane!” and Roger’s like “Yeah, duh, so did I.” Once Roger ascertains how Jewish the company is (“Fiddler on the Roof: audience or cast?”), he agrees that Jane’s presence would be appreciated. Roger brings in Ginsberg to come up with a pitch on the sly. (When told the brand is Manischewitz, Ginsberg starts, “You assume that I’m Jewish” and Roger immediately snaps back, “Stop talking,” which is fantastic.) Even though Ginsberg admits he can’t keep a secret, Roger bribes him the way he had bribed Peggy and even reflects, “I gotta stop carrying less cash.” Roger convinces Jane to come to the dinner by promising to buy her a new apartment, which Jane wants because the one she’s in features Roger’s mom as landlord and is too full of memories. At dinner with the Rosenbergs of Manischewitz, Roger and Jane are going over very well, Jane, in particular, with the handsome Rosenberg son, who comes to the dinner. Roger’s concept (by way of Ginsberg) of a bus-side ad showing a cartoon of the bus seats with cases of Manischewitz underneath goes over very well. Leaving the dinner, Roger asks to see Jane’s new apartment and, once there, he seduces her, even though she seems apprehensive about what they’re doing. In the morning, Roger goes to leave and finds Jane staring forlornly out the window, saying that this new place is ruined now too. Then she told him why she had to leave their old apartment and now he’s gone and created memories in her new one, too. Roger says he feels terrible, but doesn’t apologize really.

In Don at SCDP land, the man himself looks over some recent work and notices that Peggy’s name is conspicuously absent from the majority of the ads. He comments on this, and I was a little worried about Peggy’s future because of it. Later, as he’s getting ready to leave, he peaks in his team’s office and ends up going through some sketches that Ginsberg has lying around about an upcoming Sno-Ball campaign. He seems amused by them, and Don ends up staying late at work brainstorming some of his own ideas. At the meeting for the campaign the next day, Peggy’s concept gets shot down, but Ginsberg’s and Don’s concepts go to production. Overall, it seems that people prefer Ginsberg’s concept, though they like Don’s, as well. The decision is made to take both, and Ginsberg taunts Peggy and Stan by quoting, “Look on my works, ye might, and despair” from Shelley’s Ozymandias, and Stan gives him a wicked side eye and says “You should really read the rest of that poem, you boob.” Because Stan is awesome. Later, Ginsberg comes in to work on Roger’s campaign and finds Peggy working and totally tells her what’s up (guess he really CAN’T keep a secret) and Peggy seems thrown that he’s got a special secret-Roger project now. Especially when Ginsberg magnanimously offers to toss some work her way. Peggy confronts Roger about it, and he basically tells her that it’s every man for himself and she can’t guilt him into giving her work. On the way to the pitch to Sno-Ball, Don leaves Ginsberg’s ad in the cab, telling Harry, “I’m not taking two.” When Ginsberg finds out that his idea wasn’t pitched, he gets angry and storms off. He catches Don in the elevator the next day and tries to shame him, but Don’s not having any of it. Ginsberg says “I’ve got a million of ‘em,” and Don tosses back, “Then it’s good you work for me.” Ginsberg then tries the “I feel sorry for you” trick, to which Don simply says, “I don’t think about you at all.” I’m less concerned for Peggy now. Ginsberg is awkward and arrogant and while it seems that everyone is willing to work around the awkward, the arrogant will definitely bite him in the ass if he’s not careful. Everyone has to work their way up. Don and Peggy already have and his lack of respect for their experience is pretty galling. He might have great ideas, but he wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for them.

At the start of the episode, Pete manages to catch the elevator with Roger, Bert, and Don and announces that a reporter from the New York Times called him about a feature they were doing on “hip” ad agencies (Bert corrects him with “Hep,” which is great) and he brags a bit about how long they talked and that while the guy might come by the agency, he totally won’t want to talk to any of the other guys. He later fantasizes about Beth coming to visit him in the office wearing only a fur coat and lacy underwear after she reads the piece on him. She’s just crazy enough that I thought this was real for the first couple of minutes, but no. Thank god. Sunday morning Pete calls Don early in the morning to reveal that Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (and more specifically, Pete Campbell) aren’t mentioned in the Times anywhere. Pete tries to draw Don into a nice cathartic session of bashing the article and the writer, but Don cuts him off with, “Don’t wake me up and throw your failures in my face.” Ouch. On the train later, Howard tells him about how he’s going to spend as much time as possible with his mistress and Pete says, “How about you spend Thanksgiving with your girl and I’ll go home and screw your wife.” Howard laughs at bit while Pete just scowls.

Megan and Sally are bonding a bit as Megan works on teaching Sally some acting techniques, like how to make herself cry. Later, Megan is working with a friend of hers, Juliette, as the friend reads some sides for a part on “Dark Shadows” and laughs at the melodrama of all of it. Juliette gets snippy because Megan’s got a comfortable life without having to get parts and Megan snaps back that she’d kill for an audition on the show. Juliette ends up getting the part, which Megan tells Don as they get Thanksgiving dinner together. It’s apparently a really hot Thanksgiving and Don goes to open the balcony doors, but Megan tells him not to because the air is toxic. So for suicide anvils this week, we get a nice long shot of Don silhouetted against his balcony doors staring out into the sky.

Then we cut to Betty and Henry at Thanksgiving.  Betty says she’s thankful that she has everything she wants right before digging into her plate full of tablespoon sized servings of Thanksgiving favorites and a sad, lonely Brussels sprout right in the middle of the plate. Popping her lump of stuffing into her mouth in one bite, Betty chews slowly, savoring the flavor and closing her eyes in bliss.

Vanderkam roots her argument in the American Time Use Survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor. In this study, thousands of people track every minute of how they spend their time. Participants in the study slept an average of 8.39 hours a night on weekdays and 9.33 hours on weekends. In other surveys, however, people estimate they are only getting about six and a half hours of sleep per night. White-collar workers wildly overestimate how much time they are actually working, probably because we tend to count chats with co-workers, Facebook sessions, and other interruptions as work time, or because just a few email sessions over the weekends can give us the feeling we’re always on the clock. Parents overestimate the time they spend actually playing with or reading to their children, and everyone underestimates how much time they spend watching TV or wasting time online.

As Vanderkam points out, it’s not surprising we delude ourselves. I think Americans consider putting in a lot of hours at the office to be an unqualified virtue. We equate healthy sleep with sloth. The problem with over-estimating how busy you are, she maintains, is that you believe you’re incapable of having the kind of life you want. She recommends using even small pockets of time more wisely, just as Alianthus-Altissima did in her excellent post the other week, Women In Academia: Making Every Second Count. (Unlike Vanderkam, Alianthus-Altissima did not recommend doing pushups while your food is microwaving, for which I am grateful.)

168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think includes a few activities to start you on your way to productivity. The first one is to make a list of 100 dreams, so that you know what you really want out of life. I have done things like this before — I am a total sucker for them — but I might do it again, because lately I am much more focused on my writing goals rather than trying to excel at every damn thing there is. Vanderkam addresses this, too, asking you, in corporate parlance, to identify your “core competencies.” That way, you can spend less time on things you neither excel at nor enjoy. You can decide it’s fine not to sit through every softball game your daughter plays or not to make treats from scratch, ever.

I am in the middle of doing the next activity, in which I’m trying to track all of my time for a week. I found a great app for it and I’m going to write about that experiment in another post.

Of course, if you really aren’t wasting much time, and you are way busier than you want to be and can’t see a way out of it, you have no use for this book. It will only insult you. Parts of it annoyed me along the way. I know Vanderkam is correct about the importance of exercise, but I don’t appreciate being bossed about it constantly. Her target audience is upper-middle-class (or richer) working moms, which leads her to talk at length about some solutions that don’t fit into many people’s budgets. It would be great if we could all get a maid service, but come on.

Her viewpoints are often startling and extreme, and I think many people would feel like a life this examined would not be worth living. Welsh poet W.H. Davies wrote in the early 20th century, “What is this life if full of care,/We have no time to stand and stare?”

But I do too much standing (okay, sitting) and staring, and it doesn’t make me happy. Because I am so dreamy and easily distracted, I found this book useful. It made me feel like I might be able to do all those awesome things I want to do, after all.

The lofty goal of Feminist Theory (according to the professor) was to identify which aspect of contemporary feminism and action was most important in moving forward and why. Frankly, I thought it would be the ability for us to accept another woman’s autonomy to make decisions for herself. Or at the very least for us to try and understand her choice before harshly judging and/or regarding her as a bad feminist. Silly me.

The opposite of this utopian ideology of mine was brought into glaring revelation during a class discussion on prostitution that veered into the topic of BDSM, in which one member of the class, who was vehemently opposed to both, was regarded (and continually regarded throughout the semester) as an expert on the subject and everyone else was therefore either woefully ignorant or just plain wrong. When I posited the idea that BDSM and/or sex work could perhaps be a legitimate and empowering sexual identity/career for a woman, even for one who played the submissive role, it was swiftly shut down as a possibility at all and that I was incredibly naïve for even entertaining such notions.

The discussion started out by centering around the word “CHOICE” and how that word is approached by second- and third-wave feminists (in which y’all might have seen me express an interest on this site), specifically in regard to sex work and whether or not a woman can ever honestly choose such a career for herself. Patriarchy, subjugation, coercion, sex trafficking, drug addiction, lack of “honest” options were brought up as reasons why sex work can never really be a career legitimately chosen by the women who engage in it. These are all justifiable and valid concerns and in (probably) most cases are true, but as I learned from Jezebel and Persephone and other feminist-leaning blogs, blanket statements are not only harmful to furthering the conversation at hand, they are just not true. Which is what I decided was a good point to bring up during the discussion. And I got SLAMMED for it. That “expert” student told me I was flat out WRONG, that women can never and would never make the decision to engage voluntarily into sex work, and that if they do, the ONLY women who do are “rich, middle-aged white ladies who play dominatrix for sad, old, rich white men.” This then morphed into arguing the legitimacy of BDSM. The general consensus was that the notion of a “woman submissive” clashes too much with feminism and was not an acceptable sexually identity for a “true” feminist. I found this position to be not only extraordinarily closed-minded for a classroom of supposed feminists, but also extremely marginalizing toward alternative sexualities.

Here’s the thing: I understand that some women are forced into prostitution (by others, lack of options, what have you). It happens. I wish it didn’t. I never tried to refute these sad facts. But one cannot possibly argue that such is the case for every single woman across the board. And to blow off the women who choose sex work (legitimately choose it of their own and complete volition) as “middle- and upper-class white ladies who play dominatrix from their mansions and condos” is just as ridiculous and harmful to feminism as saying sex trafficking doesn’t exist. Blanket statements and generalizations do no one any favors. To deny any one woman’s autonomy to make a choice for herself is fundamentally anti-woman and anti-feminist. To say a woman who chooses to be a prostitute is merely a pawn of misogyny and worthy of contempt from so-called “liberated” women is hypocritical. To then argue that BDSM is not a legitimate sexual lifestyle choice is also bafflingly hypocritical and narrow minded.

Stacy May Fowels is another feminist who also identifies as a woman submissive and articulated the conflict most feminists have in her article, “Fantasy of acceptable ‘Non-consent’: why the female sexual submissive scares us (and why she shouldn’t).” From her article:

“Because I’m a feminist who enjoys domination, bondage and pain in the bedroom, it should be pretty obvious why I often remain mute and, well, pretty closeted about my sexuality…. It’s important to point out that, however you attempt to excuse it, this inability to accept BDSM into the feminist dialogue is really just a form of kinkophobia, a widely accepted prejudice against the practice of power-exchange sex…. Whether or not it’s difficult to accept that the desire to be demeaned is not a product of a society that seeks to objectify women, I would argue that, regardless of appearance, by its very nature BDSM is constantly about consent.” (Fowels).

We stay silent because of the vitriol we receive during discussions. My sexual autonomy and identity was not only questioned and judged, it was REFUSED to me by a group of college-educated, liberal women during what was supposed to be a thoughtful and open conversation regarding sex work and choice. For the rest of the semester, I felt alienated by my peers who repeatedly told me how wrong I was, that I didn’t know what I was talking about/was a bad feminist, and therefore, also implied that I was on some level stupid — in what should have been mostly a safe space.

Fowels uses her essay to explain her struggles with reconciling her feminist identity with that of her discovery of her kink, and how the two don’t need to be “reconciled” because they can co-exist. For my part, my own venture into BDSM has been highly empowering. I spent five years (from the time I was in eighth grade until the fall semester of my sophomore year at college) in a relationship where rape was colored under the pretenses of “love” and “uncontrollable” attraction. I would wake up with my boyfriend inside of me, and when I would attempt to protest, he would then stroke my hair and use other facsimiles of Hollywood and tell me he was just too overcome with “love” and “desire.” He used the same tropes repeatedly in order to coerce me into (or brush off events that already happened) many unwanted sexual encounters that relied on altruistic consent or none whatsoever. By the time I finally figured out that the relationship was abusive (in numerous other ways to boot) and left, a light and “loving” graze of his finger down my forearm would set my nerves on fire like a red-hot knife was being dragged across it. When I started engaging in consensual sex, I started playing around with light BDSM. Light, loving touches and words created a visceral reaction in my body that was overcome by the discovery of this new identity. Everything that happens during BDSM happens according to my rules. It happens how I want it, when I want it, and if it doesn’t happen that way nothing else happens at all. As a submissive, I control the power because I am the one who hands it out. And to tell me otherwise (or to denigrate my experience with it or call me a bad feminist because of it) is to treat me the same way and with as little respect to my autonomy as my abusive ex did.

In conclusion, what I learned from Feminist Theory was that I was a bad feminist and an oppressed and stupid woman. What I wish I had learned, and an ideal I had hoped would round out contemporary feminism, is that open-minded regarding a woman’s sexual autonomy is a good thing. And it would be nice if some of the people in Women’s Studies Programs would lead the way in this stance. Women’s Studies is not like math or physics or biology. We are not to be bound by theories and generalizations. It is our experiences, our differences, which make us the women we are in the world and shape how we live in it. Theories do not apply to our day-to-day lives. They can’t because of their over-generalizing nature. To say they do demeans our individual experiences, which hinders our ability to work collectively. And to engage each other in this way as feminists is harmful and alienating.

Source:

Fowles, Stacey May. fantasy of acceptable ‘Non-consent’: why the female sexual submissive scares us (and why she shouldn’t); AlterNet, December 29, 2008 (AN MRB-LAX090116-008)

When Sofia was a few months old, we got her a passport. We knew we’d be traveling out of the country with her before she turned five, and the prices were about to go up, so we got one (she’s going to be so embarrassed when she’s four-and-a-half and her passport picture is of a baby). It got me thinking, though — what about keeping track of different states where she’s been? As an adult, I occasionally try to think of the different states where I have been, and I usually fail. My memory is not great, and my sense of direction is worse. And so The Only Crafty Thing I’ve Ever Done That Was Worth Talking About was born:

Don't be fooled! This is not a U.S. Passport.

This is a fake fake passport, because her real name isn't Jane Doe.

What you will need:

• Small paper notebooks (this is potentially make-able on your own, if you are more crafty than I am) — I ordered these from Amazon for $11.29; kind of pricey for a DIY, but there are 12 books in there, so I made a set for my daughter, my nephew, and my two nieces.
• A way to mark individual states (also potentially make-able on your own) – I ordered these stickers from Amazon for $7.50, because I have terrible handwriting.
• A picture of your kid (it does not have to meet U.S. Passport requirements)
• A date stamp — I like the self-stampers because they are easy to contain and they just feel so official.

What to do:

1. Tape a picture of kiddo to the front of the book. That way, nobody can steal the passport and sell it on the black market.
2. Put some info on the first page. I put “Passport holder” and her full name, and then “Passport issued” and her date of birth.
3. Mark each page with a different state — really easy to do if you use the stickers. The passport books I got from Amazon only have 22 pages, so it took three books to get a page for every state. There are leftover blank pages at the back of the third book which can be used for places in Canada, or as Sofia gets older, she might want to add some specific destinations (grandma’s house, McDonald’s Whole Foods, etc.)
4. Decide on house international rules for consistency. Our rules say that your feet have to actually touch the ground in the state for it to count, and we sometimes put in descriptions next to the stamp (Aunt Elenor’s house for Christmas!).
5. Revel in your awesomeness.

Guess which state we lived in.

One thing that I had planned to do, and still might do when she’s a bit older, is have her draw a picture next to the stamp for the state. She’s still too uncoordinated for that to be feasible, but it’s an additional idea. Also, I’m considering adding pictures of her in the states to make it even more of a memory keeper.

This craft is easy to do, easy to make look decent, and is something that can be kept up with forever. Sofia just turned two, and some pages (the states in which we’ve lived) are filling up, while some others have a lone stamp. It’s already one of my prized possessions.

1. Big Love (acoustic) – Fleetwood Mac

My uncle once asked my dad if he was the one who influenced my interest in Fleetwood Mac. “No, it’s all her,” my dad said. He liked Fleetwood Mac well enough to have a handful of albums (mostly in the Stevie/Lindsey incarnation, with the exception of Mystery to Me), but I don’t remember them being played all that often.

Honestly, I’m not sure how I started listening to the band. When they reunited in 1997, I remember complaining that the concert was all that was on TV. Maybe something grabbed me when “Silver Spring” and “Landslide” were on the radio a lot, but I found myself picking up those old albums and eventually buying The Dance, the reunited live album. I finally watched the concert when PBS reran it during a pledge drive.

The original version of this song, a single from Tango in the Night, makes me giggle a bit at its ’80s-ness, and I do have a soft spot for it. However, the re-tooled acoustic version that Lindsey Buckingham now plays just leaves me in awe that anyone can play the guitar like that. I don’t know how anyone can get that many different notes and sounds out of one instrument with only two hands. The song serves as proof that Buckingham is continually underrated as a guitarist. I’m not sure that I’ve seen him mentioned more than once whenever a roundup of “Greatest Guitarists” is published, and it’s really too bad. Sure, there are times when he can be a bit indulgent, dragging the guitar solos out a bit too long (“I’m So Afraid” being a major culprit), but at least he does it well.

“Big Love” is song that builds and builds to the point where even the odd grunts at the end do not seem all that out of place in the emotional release. This song always get huge cheers from the audience, as it did when I had the chance to see them live in 2004. It’s one of those rare songs where I barely consider the lyrics — the appeal lies entirely in the unrestrained acoustic arrangement. “Big Love” is part exorcism, part primal scream, and lives entirely up to its name.

2. Be My Wife – David Bowie

Sometimes you get so lonely
Sometimes you get nowhere

One of my all-time favorite David Bowie songs, “Be My Wife” is a fantastic piano assault with guitar dressing and a vaguely disco drum beat. Bowie, of course, was one of the first to create music videos with any regularity, and this video goes along with the 1977 release of Low — an album I bought for 25 cents on cassette when the local Hastings was clearing out all their cassettes in the late ’90s. My 1988 Volvo did not yet have a CD player, so I was still perfectly happy with the format, and even though I don’t listen to cassettes very often now, I still make sure I have a working player in the house.

Please be mine
Share my life
Stay with me
Be my wife

I’m only half-joking when I saw that David Bowie is my spirit animal. I love that he has made an entire career doing exactly what he wants, regardless of popular opinion. I once heard someone say that if his music could at first seem out of place, one should wait a few years and then everyone would attempt to sound that way while he had already moved on. I’ve never done a year-by-year comparison of his music vs. popular music, but I bet it’s not far off.

This video is kind of funny because it’s post-Ziggy Stardust but pre-Thin White Duke incarnations. The regular guy ’70s clothes and his haircut all seem borderline “normal,” so of course he’s got to have make-up like an overzealous Mary Kay saleswoman. I do love a man in make-up, but this is not his best look.

No matter, though, for this is an outstanding love song that gets right to the point. Let’s not fool around with the flowers and the grand declarations; let’s make this official.

3. Bedroom Eyes – Dum Dum Girls

Hey, look, I’m able to include new songs. I’m not completely out of the loop yet! I came across Dum Dum Girls through the music site Hard Candy, when they posted the video for “Bedroom Eyes.” Confession time: I do dig excellent hosiery, and there are four sets here. Not that I’m objectifying. -Cough- I mean… Great tune!

No, in all seriousness, I really do love “Bedroom Eyes.” It’s like a cross between Phil Spector’s ’60s girl groups and ’80s alternative like you might see on VH1 Classic’s version of 120 Minutes. (Do they still air that? They did 2 years ago when I still had satellite.) Despite the upbeat music, it’s a song all about missing someone. I love this bit:

The hours to the sunrise creep, but I don’t care
There is no hope for any sleep if you’re not here
In another scene, in another bed you’re sleeping
So won’t you come and visit me when I’m dreaming

I’m not a great sleeper to begin with, but I’m even worse now if I’m in the bed by myself. My husband was out of town for just one night last week, and I was up until 3:30 a.m. I imagine that if it were a more regular occurrence, I would learn to get used to it, but the nights here and there seem long. We’ve spent over 10 years together, and we’re spoiled by relatively constant proximity. Because my love for this song is somewhat new, I don’t have a specific memory attached to it yet, but I will say that, in the mister’s absence, the bed feels entirely too cold.

4. Bonedriven – Bush (the album version and the Mekon/Beat Me Clever Remix)

After seeing Bush on Saturday Night Live and forever cementing my love (more about that when we reach the letter “S”), MTV ran a special about their second album, Razorblade Suitcase. (I know. Try to recover from the novelty of MTV still giving a shit about music, but I suppose 1996 was the beginning of the wind-down into 16 and Pregnant hell.)

The band recorded RBSC at Abbey Road, and in some of the footage, they showed Gavin Rossdale singing along with a string quartet. Strings in rock make my heart go a’pitter-patter, especially when the sound goes beyond the violin. I was 13, and I’d just switched to playing cello after three years of viola. The prominently featured cello bits had me further enamored.

“Bonedriven,” the album version, is gorgeous and spare, though a bit heartbreaking. Gavin’s voice aches at the demise of a relationship and the depression that follows. “I was wrong and I will wait” grabs me on a literary level, and it is one of those lines that is a story in itself. The song captures a contradiction, which is feeling so empty and yet being so consumed by emotion that identifying a single emotion feels impossible. Sixteen years later, I am just as in love with this song as I was the first time I heard it.

Now, the remix. Well, the story with it is considerably more light. My friend Kristen and I had (and still have) a tendency to go through odd and (what we think is) funny trains of thought, particularly if we have some time on our hands. While listening to Deconstructed, Bush’s 1997 remix album, we started dancing. At the 13-second mark, we came up with this funny foot-hopping, arm-circling move that was intentionally reminiscent of the Elaine dance from Seinfeld. Doing it in unison (harder than you’d think) added to the comedic effect, so of course we had to show all our friends. It didn’t catch on like my dad’s “Old Man Shuffle” — his joking attempt at dancing — but I bet a few people still remember it. I get the urge to jump up and do it every time I play the song.

5. Brass in Pocket – Pretenders

Cos I’m gonna make you see
There’s nobody else here, no one like me
I’m special (so special!)
I gotta have some of your attention
Give it to me

During the summer I turned 14, I spent a lot of time grounded, mainly for running off to meet boys without saying where I was going. As you do. I wasn’t supposed to be on the phone, nor was I supposed to be touching my dad’s records without asking, but there I was talking to Kristen and putting albums on the turntable.

Kristen and I would occasionally play songs that had caught our attention over the phone to one another. Earlier in the conversation, I’d played the original “Iron Man” from Black Sabbath, as we’d only heard The Cardigans’ cover. Then, in the process of putting The Singles on to play “Brass in Pocket,” I knocked out the needle from its cartridge. I looked all over the shelf and the floor, but I could not find it. Last thing I needed was to be grounded longer, so I put the record back and said nothing. My dad would obsessively vacuum, so when he discovered the missing needle, he assumed that he’d inadvertently sucked it up while cleaning. And really, I bet he did, but I never told him that it was me that knocked it out in the first place. Eventually, my parents replaced the needle, and I don’t think I’ve ever told them.

“Brass in Pocket” has always been my favorite Pretenders song. I don’t know when I heard it the first time — probably on the radio — as I was 3+ years away from being born at the time of its release. When I sing along, I probably botch the words, and I’m horribly off-key, for it’s the sort of song that perhaps only Chrissie Hynde can do well. She’s badass, man. Pretenders are the first band I ever saw live, and she moved the burliest bikers to tears. Her voice was fantastic originally, still great at that 1999 gig, and with the live version of the song I have posted here, she’s still got it.

Side note: How many bands as long-lasting as the Pretenders do you see that still have their original drummer? I mean, yes, there was a period in the ’80s when he left, but for the last 20 years, Martin Chambers has sat behind the kit. And though it was for only a brief time, ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr even had a stint in the band. That? Also badass. Even with the newer members who look like children compared to Hynde, I would love to see them live again.

Honorable Mentions:
“Bittersweet Symphony” – The Verve
“Beyond The Sea” – Bobby Darin (This link goes to a great live performance.)
“Baby Talk to Me” – Bye Bye Birdie Soundtrack (I have the original soundtrack, but here, have a link to the revival with John Stamos. STAMOS! He’s not as good of a singer as Dick Van Dyke, but that’s all right.)

So what about you? Tell me the songs you love that start with the letter “B.”

What is your perfect afternoon, if you were left alone without any responsibilities? Would you go out and do something fun, or, like me, would you just curl up and nap?