gimme head

What do I have to do to get some head at work, too?

For the record, Rick— she works for a state agency in California. Just like we used to.
Via Ms.Bee'sKnees

bizarre sex habits of the extreme right-wing

I tend to think of fundamentalists as people with issues so difficult for them to control that they feel driven to exert control over others. Case in point: Neal Horsley's recent interview with Alan Colmes. Given that I didn't see it, I can't really discern if it was a joke gone too far or just what my friend Nolan refers to as a case of "inappropriate sharing."

Last night, anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley was a guest on The Alan Colmes Show, a FOX News radio program. The topic was an interesting one - whether or not an internet service provider should allow Horsley to post the names of abortion doctors on his website. Horsley does that as a way of targeting them and one doctor has been killed. In the course of the interview, however, Colmes asked Horsley about his background, including a statement that he had admitted to engaging in homosexual and bestiality sex.

At first, Horsley laughed and said, "Just because it's printed in the media, people jump to believe it."

"Is it true?" Colmes asked.

"Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I..."

AC: "You had sex with animals?"
NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."
AC: "I'm not so sure that that is so."
NH: "You didn't grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?"
AC: "Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?"
NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality... Welcome to domestic life on the farm..."

Colmes said he thought there were a lot of people in the audience who grew up on farms, are living on farms now, raising kids on farms and "and I don't think they are dating Elsie right now. You know what I'm saying?"

Horsley said, "You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. You're naive. You know better than that... If it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it."

In addition to Horsley, Colmes has recently interviewed Randall Terry another radical anti-abortionist and anti-gay activist. In the middle of an otherwise serious interview, Terry began joking - apropos of nothing - that he and Colmes were ex-lovers.

Another extremist interviewed by Colmes not too long ago was Rev. Fred Phelps who stated on the show that he thought the death penalty should be given for those who engage in "sodomy." When Colmes asked Phelps if he had ever engaged in gay sex, Phelps blustered but never said no.

Hmm, I'm beginning to sense a pattern here. Come to think of it, Ann Coulter is reputed to have an unusually, er, wide-ranging sex life, too, though as far as I know it's just confined to men. Still, it doesn't exactly match the profile of an ultra-conservative.

Via Amber and the News Hounds

oh no he diiiin't

I had a sociology professor in college who was a black South African. He made the point that when he was growing up, he preferred the blatant discrimination of the Afrikaaners to the subtle discrimination of the British-descended whites. His point: At least you knew where you stood with the Afrikaaner.

I'm hoping that Vicente Fox's gaffe was due to a language barrier and not the legacy of a latin culture riddled with anti-black feelings. (I'm all too familiar with that, given my own bigoted Latina mother.) But even if it wasn't, at least it's clear where the man stands on race issues. Discrimination that's overt can be called what it is: ugly, misinformed, and unrealistic. Discrimination that's subtle is worse, because it takes even longer to overturn.

President said Mexicans take U.S. jobs ‘not even blacks want to do’
MEXICO CITY - President Vicente Fox came under criticism Saturday after saying Mexicans were willing to take jobs “that not even blacks want to do in the United States.”

Fox’s remark Friday came a day after Mexico announced it would formally protest recent U.S. immigration reforms, including the decision to extend walls along the border and make it harder for illegal migrants to get driver’s licenses.

“There’s no doubt that the Mexican men and women — full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work — are doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the United States,” Fox told a meeting of the Texas-Mexico Frozen Food Council in the western city of Puerto Vallarta on Friday.

Via MSNBC

a new counterterrorism strategy: feminism

Riddle me this: Why do we want 25% of elected and appointed officials to be female in government in Iraq, yet we're content with only 14% in our own Congress? And how is it that there will be universal healthcare in Iraq, but our own government won't support universal healthcare in this country? I find it a bit troubling that we're declaring these to be the cornerstones of a free and fair society in the rest of the world, but don't live up to these standards in our own democracy.

And while your knickers are in a twist over theses and other inequities, read Barbara Ehrenriech's novel theory — Rights and Liberties: A sustained and serious effort to gain human rights for women worldwide could be the start of a brand new approach to fighting terrorism. It's guaranteed to make you think. And to get your panties into an even bigger wad.

But as Carmen Bin Ladin urgently reminds us in her book Inside the Kingdom, one glaring moral flaw of this insurgency, quite apart from its methods, is that it aims to push one-half of those masses down to a status only slightly above that of domestic animals. While Osama was getting pumped up for jihad, Carmen was getting up her nerve to walk across the street in a residential neighborhood in Jeddah--fully-veiled but unescorted by a male, something that is an illegal act for a woman in Saudi Arabia. Eventually she left the kingdom and got a divorce because she didn't want her daughters to grow up in a place where women are kept "locked in and breeding."

So here in one word is my new counterterrorism strategy: feminism. Or, if that's too incendiary, try the phrase "human rights for women." I don't mean just a few opportunistic references to women, like those that accompanied the war on the Taliban and were quietly dropped by the Bush administration when that war was abandoned and Afghan women were locked back into their burqas. I'm talking about a sustained and serious effort.

We should announce plans to pour U.S. tax dollars into girls' education in places like Pakistan, where the high-end estimate for female literacy is 26 percent, and into scholarships for women seeking higher education in nations that typically discourage it. (Secular education for the boys wouldn't hurt, either.) Expand the grounds for asylum to all women fleeing gender totalitarianism, wherever it springs up. Reverse the Bush policies on global family planning, which condemn seventy-eight thousand women to death each year in makeshift abortions. Lead the global battle against the trafficking of women. I'm not expecting such measures alone to incite a feminist insurgency within the Islamist one. Carmen Bin Ladin found her rich Saudi sisters-in-law sunk in bovine passivity, and some of the more spirited young women in the Muslim world have been adopting the head scarf as a gesture of defiance toward American imperialism. We're going to need a thorough foreign policy makeover--from Afghanistan to Israel--before we have the credibility to stand up for anyone's human rights. You can't play the gender card with dirty hands.

If this country were to embrace a feminist strategy against the insurgency, we'd have to start by addressing our own dismal record on women's rights. We'd be pushing for the immediate ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which has been ratified by 169 countries but remains stalled in the U.S. Senate. We'd be threatening to break off relations with Saudi Arabia until it acknowledged the humanity of women. And we'd be thundering about the shortage of women in the U.S. Senate and House, an internationally embarrassing 14 percent. We should be aiming for a representation of at least 25 percent, the same target the Transitional Administrative Law of Iraq has set for the federal assembly there.

Via AlterNet

how dry i am

Just in time for the Friday the 13th happy hour!

A resource for the tippling Web enthusiast: Droogle. Search for a drink name and up comes the cocktail. Plus, the liquor cabinet function allows you to go to war with the alcohol you have, not the alcohol you want.
Via Wacky Neighbor

quick $tarbucks question of the day

Aaron walks into my office this morning and says:

"What's the difference between a tall decaf and a tall iced decaf?"

"Other than the obvious physical difference?"

"Sixty cents. The iced one costs more."

le baiser de l’hôtel de ville sells for $242,000

I'm passionate about photography. This semester, I've spent one night a week in a darkroom and another night in a class where the professor spends 90% of the lecture telling war stories and the remaining 10% imparting useful information about photography. But I digress ...

Robert Doisneau is one of my favorite photographers. He was one of the most amazing documentary photographers ever. And, no, it doesn't bother me a bit that he staged some of the images, including the one at the right.

I came to his work through a poster of Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville (The Kiss at City Hall) several years ago and have since fallen in love with an amazing body of work. I was lucky enough to see over one hundred of his original prints last year, right before heading to Paris for what would be the first of two trips to France in 2004.

Anyhow, while at my photography class tonight, I learned something interesting. The woman in this photograph sold her original print last month for the equivalent of U.S. $242,000.

Adieu to a famous kiss, hello £105,000

The woman who in 1950 posed for Robert Doisneau’s celebrated photograph of a couple kissing in Paris sold her signed print last night for £105,000 — seven times the auction house estimate.

Françoise Bornet, 78, who posed for the picture that became known as Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville for Doisneau with a fellow drama student who was then her boyfriend, put her copy up for sale to raise funds for her husband to open a film production company. She had expected to make £15,000. The price paid by a Swiss collector who bid by phone reflects the power exerted by an image that has sold half a million posters in 20 years.

Bidding for the picture took off as soon as the auctioneer opened proceedings at £7,000. “The presence of the ‘lover of the Hôtel de Ville’ in the saleroom added to the magic,” said the auctioneer, Herve Poulain.

“We are really set up for the future now,” Mme Bornet said.

Doisneau took the picture on the Rue de Rivoli, by the City Hall, as part of a series on Paris for Life magazine. It was little known until 1984, when it was published as a poster.

Doisneau, who died in 1994, disclosed in 1992 that he had asked Mme Bornet and Jacques Carteaud to stage the kiss after seeing them cuddling in a café. Mme Bornet said: “He was probably trying to take a candid photo of lovers. But when he saw us he approached us and asked if we would agree to kiss again. We knew the photographer’s reputation and we leapt at the chance.”

Via timesonline.co.uk

a guide to the star wars galaxy

MSNBC has gone and created a cool guide to how all the characters fit into the saga that is Episodes I - VI.

party time in moscow

Via theviewfrom103

stone the harlots

Women who fornicate deserve to die.

So say the religious nutjobs at the Family Research Council (FRC) . The message: It's better to let millions die rather than do anything that might lead to fornication, and cancer isn't all that bad if it keeps people chaste.

The facts:

1. Cervical cancer kills lots of women each year worldwide.
2. It is among the most deadly forms of cancer because it is usually detected at an advanced (and therefore untreatable) stage.
3. It is caused by certain strains of the sexually transmitted Human Papilloma Virus (HPV).
4. HPV has infected "half of all sexually active women between 18 and 22 in the US."
5. There's now a vaccine to prevent HPV.

Deaths from cervical cancer could jump fourfold to a million a year by 2050, mainly in developing countries. This could be prevented by soon-to-be-approved vaccines against the virus that causes most cases of cervical cancer - but there are signs that opposition to the vaccines might lead to many preventable deaths.

In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favour vaccinating their daughters. “Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV,” says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council (FRC), a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.

“Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex,” Maher claims, though it is arguable how many young women have even heard of the virus.

You have got to be kidding.

Let me get this straight — apparently, getting cervical cancer is the least of your problems, because if you got it through fornication, you're going to hell anyhow. I guess the wages of sin really are death. But what about virgins or faithful women who get HPV from their no-good (but promiscuous) husbands? Do they deserve the same fate as the harlots who engaged in premarital sex?

And does the FRC oppose treatments for other STDs? Eugene Volokh observes:

The availability of antibiotic treatment for syphilis, gonorrhea, and other bacterial sexually transmitted diseases similarly decreases the cost of sex, and may thus increase people's tendency to engage in sex.

Would the FRC urge that people not be offered treatment for these diseases?

Personally, I'm a fan of both vaccines and premarital sex. I've had a lot of both over the years and I think I'm better for the experience.

If the Family Research Council opposes one or both, they should feel free to encourage people to avoid them But if they want to discourage the development and availability of vaccines because they'd rather see people live in fear of avoidable diseases, then they're not going to have much room to complain when people accuse them of wanting to turn back the clock -- and of being motivated more by opposition to sex than by support for families.

Via DDTB and Eugene Volokh

check yo'self before you wreck yo'self

The American Cancer Society just launched the Great American Health Check.

Take the check and in just five minutes, you'll get a confidential personalized health action plan to share with your doctor.

lest we forget

Last week, supermom Susan G. recounted a conversation with her high-school age daughter, triggered by an MTV special on the Holocaust. Here are the lessons of the Holocaust as they apply to us today, distilled from that conversation with Dom:
1.) Bigotry is alive and well.
2.) Beware of leaders who seek to take away your freedom.

The "March of the Living" (part of Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations) also admonishes us all to be mindful of what can happen when citizens hand over their freedoms.

Just months after the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, over 20,000 walked three kilometres (two miles) from the camp to Birkenau where prime ministers of Israel and Poland urged the world not to forget the death of 6 million Jews.

"We are saying - we are alive, we are a nation. There are so many people from around the world here, it is a guarantee this will not happen again. We have all survived the Holocaust," said Jenya Sonts, a Russian student walking with three Indian Jews.

Survivors, some of whom returned for the first time to their place of anguish after losing parents and siblings, came to the march with their own families.

"After the survivors die, this will become history. When it does, someone has to say, I was here, I spoke to a survivor, I touched one. This is the torch passed from the survivors to the next generations," the march's founder, Abraham Hirchson said.

Via MSNBC

quotable

"When it comes to solving many of the problems that face us in this world, I believe in girl power."
-Kofi Annan, 1938 - , UN Secretrary General and statesman, speaking at the International Women's Health Coalition benefit

engrish

Via Engrish

fda restricts gay sperm donors

There are certain things I can't do because I've recently had cancer. Some are because I'm at higher risk for recurrence (I can't get life insurance right now or join the Peace Corps). Others are things I can't do because my health status could jeopardize someone else. The biggest of these is being a blood donor. I can't give blood for 7 years after my cancer diagnosis, because there's a chance that I could give my disease to someone else. And frankly, I think that is entirely reasonable.

But what the FDA is about to do is flat-out ridiculous. They've singled out gay male sperm donors, stating they have a higher risk of HIV, but are ignoring straight men who engage in risky sexual behaviors.

To the dismay of gay-rights activists, the Food and Drug Administration is about to implement new rules recommending that any man who has engaged in homosexual sex in the previous five years be barred from serving as an anonymous sperm donor.

The FDA has rejected calls to scrap the provision, insisting that gay men collectively pose a higher-than-average risk of carrying the AIDS virus. Critics accuse the FDA of stigmatizing all gay men rather than adopting a screening process that focuses on high-risk sexual behavior by any would-be donor, gay or straight.

"Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitutes would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he's been celibate for five years," said Leland Traiman, director of a clinic in Alameda, Calif., that seeks gay sperm donors.

Don't get me wrong -- I support restrictions on who can donate, but think that there are better ways to prevent the transmission of HIV and AIDS.

Traiman said adequate safety assurances can be provided by testing a sperm donor at the time of the initial donation, then freezing the sperm for a six-month quarantine and testing the donor again to be sure there is no new sign of HIV or other infectious diseases.

But I can't support a policy based on bigotry.
Via PlanetOut

epa withholds information contrary to bush administration policy

File this under "not so shocking."

EPA in a hot spot over mercury pollution
Critics said the report shows the Bush administration sought to minimize the benefits of reducing mercury pollution in order to justify not requiring power plant owners to buy the most effective technology for lowering mercury emissions.

“EPA has a track record of withholding information that doesn’t support their agenda, and this is the latest example,” said Felice Stadler, a National Wildlife Federation policy specialist.

Via MSNBC

cidade de deus (city of god)

Cidade de Deus (City of God) is easily the most violent, disturbing, and compelling film I've seen this year. The story is gutwrenching, the film is beautifully shot, and it's based on true events to boot.

Cidade de Deus (City of God) is a breathtakingly convincing interpretation of life in the notorious favela (housing project) built in the 1960s that became one of the most dangerous places in Rio de Janeiro in the early 80s. The narrator, Busca-Pé (Rocket), is a poor black youth too scared to become an outlaw but also too smart to be content with underpaid, menial jobs. He soon discovers that he can see reality differently than others. His redemption: he's been given an artist's point of view as a keen-eyed photographer.

Rocket doesn't determine the sequence of events. Nevertheless, his life is attached to what happens in the story. Through his perspective, we understand the complicated layers and humanity of a forsaken world, apparently condemned to endless violence.

Via Monsieur Law

j2k-five is alive

Who knew? http://www.jesusoftheweek.com/

does elijah wood know about this?!?

My former boss Rick was a newspaper man in a previous life. As a Los Angeles Times editor, he reserved exclamation marks for only the most extreme headlines.

I daresay this naked hobbit site qualifies.
Via PlanetDan

darth vader's blog is better than yours

http://darthside.blogspot.com/ is some seriously funny shiznit.

I will say this for being a tyrannical dark overlord: you get great service at restaurants.

Via DDTB and WackyNeighbor.

rip: bob hunter

Bob Hunter, the first president of Greenpeace, died of cancer on May 2, 2005 at the age of 63. It's sobering to think about this man's legacy. His work has impacted millions and yet, I'd never heard his name until this week.

Pictured: Bob Hunter in the radio room with the skipper, John Cormack, June 1975, while preparing for a showdown with Russian whalers. The radio had not worked for three days, and the crew was unable to tell anyone where they were, let alone broadcast to the media. They had yet to see the whalers, but could hear Russian voices over the radio.
Courageous ecowarrior who co-founded Greenpeace and artfully manipulated the media to shame the despoilers of the Earth

Bob Hunter was one of the original ecowarriors. A man with a knack for words — indeed he coined the term eco-warrior — he was also a man of action who inspired a new brand of personal environmental activism.

He was nearly killed when a Russian whale hunter’s harpoon parted his hair as he bobbed in a rubber dinghy in the cold waters of the north Pacific between the whaler’s bows and its quarry. On another occasion he narrowly escaped being killed by a hunter’s icebreaker when he was dyeing the white pelts of baby harp seals to make them worthless.

He was a prolific journalist, the author of more than a dozen books, a broadcaster, a scathingly humorous critic of polluters, dumpers and exploiters, and a celebrity spokesman for environmental activism, but his greatest claim to fame was his role in the founding of Greenpeace in 1971.

Hunter was an admirer of the ideas of his fellow-Canadian, the communications guru Marshall McLuhan. He put McLuhan’s celebrated dictum that “the medium is the message” into dramatic, mediagenic practice and took his environmentalist message to a vast global audience.

Another of the punchy new expressions Hunter coined was “mind bomb”, to describe an image which leaves an indelible image on the mind’s eye. The first “mind bomb” spawned Greenpeace in 1971.

Hunter, proud possessor of Greenpeace membership card No 000, became the organisation’s first president in 1973 and helped to lead it from a rickety rented office with a handful of volunteers in Vancouver to an international movement with branches in more than 40 countries and more than 2.5 million members.

Hunter had been unpaid for all but two months of the seven years he worked for Greenpeace.

Via NPR and http://www.timesonline.co.uk

this is a shoutout to susan a

Once upon a time, I had this great co-worker named Susan A. We worked out together, we crafted together, and she made the most amazing desserts EVER. (Can you say "Nolan's Cocaine Carrot Cake, boys and girls?!) When I got sick, she singlehandedly arranged for meals to be delivered to my home for 35 days after my surgery.

Then, one day, Susan moved to the other side of the USA and I was sad, because it meant I couldn't see her, or her dog Emily, or husband Ben. And it also meant I couldn't eat her scrumdiddlyumptuous baked goods anymore.

That is, until the other day, when a birthday delivery of ohmygodnoreallythey'rebetterthansex brownies arrived, with a note from Susan, some potholders she crocheted, and some CDs she knew I wanted.

Ladies and gentlemen, Susan A. rocks. Simply put, I don't deserve a friend as good as her.

616 is the new 666

Holy crap! 616 is the real reference to Caligula, whom history remembers for his intolerance re: all things Christian.

It's not really surprising that John the Revelator made the mistake -- after all, he was living in a cave on Patmos near a volcanic gas duct when he wrote that (and many other whacked out, but nevertheless interesting, things) in the Book of Revelations. And Peter Gilmore's comment at the end of this article is flat-out hilarious.

Revelation! 666 is not the number of the beast (it's a devilish 616)
A newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament indicates that, as far as the Antichrist goes, theologians, scholars, heavy metal groups, and television evangelists have got the wrong number. Instead of 666, it's actually the far less ominous 616.

The new fragment from the Book of Revelation, written in ancient Greek and dating from the late third century, is part of a hoard of previously unintelligible manuscripts discovered in historic dumps outside Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Now a team of expert classicists, using new photographic techniques, are finally deciphering the original writing.

Professor David Parker, Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism and Paleography at the University of Birmingham, thinks that 616, although less memorable than 666, is the original. He said: "This is an example of gematria, where numbers are based on the numerical values of letters in people's names. Early Christians would use numbers to hide the identity of people who they were attacking: 616 refers to the Emperor Caligula."

The Book of Revelation is traditionally considered to be written by John, a disciple of Jesus; it identifies 666 as the mark of the Antichrist. In America, the fundamentalist Christian right often use the number in sermons about the coming Apocalypse.

They and satanists responded coolly to the new "Revelation". Peter Gilmore, High Priest of the Church of Satan, based in New York, said: "By using 666 we're using something that the Christians fear. Mind you, if they do switch to 616 being the number of the beast then we'll start using that."

Via PlanetDan

ah, mcsweeney's

It's been forever since I visited McSweeney's. Today didn't disappoint:

• The Settings That Would Be On a Blender Today If the Blender Had Been Invented, Say, 100 Years Before Its Actual Invention Date of 1922
• Fortune-Cookie Sayings That Are Misleading and, At Times, Dangerous When Used as Road Signs

35 years ago today

Kent State was 35 years ago today.

Allison Krause, Sandra Scheuer, Jeffrey Miller and William Schroeder we were unarmed, registered, full time students at Kent State University when they were killed by Ohio National Guard bullets on May 4, 1970. Eight other students were wounded.

"You know, you see these bums, you know, blowin' up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are, burnin' up the books, I mean, stormin' around about this issue, I mean, you name it —- get rid of the war, there'll be another one." -- Richard Nixon, New York Times, May 2, 1970

It's sad, but the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Via Scott

quotable

"We must overcome the notion that we must be regular. It robs you of your chance to be extraordinary."
-Uta Hagen, 1919- , stage and film actress

this american life: american limbo

I was enthralled by this weekend's This American Life. The theme, American Limbo, included stories of people living completely outside the grid of American life. I was on the edge of my seat, waiting to hear if the Jarvis family would get caught and waxed nostalgic at "The Rookie," a bedtime story for a little boy living in Paris.

Prologue. Ira talks with Lee Qi, who came to America from China. He worked in Chinese restaurants in small towns, live in tiny apartments with other illegal immigrants who worked there as well, apartments that were sometimes in the back of the restaurants. He couldn't speak English, didn't go to school. He was 15. It was like being in limbo, he says: here in America, but not part of it at all. (4 minutes)

Act One. The Family That Flees Together, Trees Together. The Jarvis family, a group of eight, goes on the run from the law–for seven years. They live on a boat, in a treehouse in a swamp. They escape capture time after time. And how do the kids turn out, living a life outside of society, as fugitives? Surprisingly great. (22 minutes)

Act Two. What's French for "Steeee-rike Three"? Adam Gopnik reads a story from his book Paris
to the Moon, about living in Paris with his family and wanting his son to be a bit more American. He tells him a bedtime story about the most American thing he can think of: baseball. But it doesn't work out the way he planned. (18 minutes)

tour de lance

Lance Armstrong is the closest I'll ever come to having a sports hero. I read both of his books after my own cancer experience and I am very impressed with the work he's done through the Lance Armstrong Foundation and how much money (and awareness) the Livestrong bracelet campaign has generated.

While in Normandy last summer, I would stay up into the wee hours watching TV coverage of Lance laboring up mountain roads, cheering him on and feeling really proud of my fellow American cancer survivor. (Anyone who knows me knows that I detest sports in general and TV sports coverage in particular.)

Anyhow, Lance has announced that this year's Tour de France will be his last. I hope he wins and will be following his training. You can get the latest on Lance and follow his team's progress at the Official Team Discovery site.

i'd rather be walkabout

Cathy and Jason's year-long trip around the world continues. Read about their adventures in India, Burma, Thailand, Laos.

david sedaris is the man

I was lucky enough to go see David Sedaris again Friday night. Simply put, he's the most wickedly funny man on the planet. After the reading, he signed two books for me:

• "Me Talk Pretty One Day," which I love because it includes several stories about his struggle to learn French and resonates with me on a scary deep level. He asked "Did you come alone tonight?" when I got to the signing table. When I responded "No, I brought fourteen friends," he wrote "To Happy, Thanks for making me rich."
• "501 French Verbs," in which he wrote "I hate this."

I love David. And I daresay that I would actually consider having a child tomorrow if he were the sperm donor.