Sunny Spinning

Sunny Spinning, originally uploaded by P.S.Zollo.

How gorgeous is this shot. Very.

Lumiere Brother's Film in Color

I keep watching this over and over again. The film was made c. 1899 and the stills were colored by hand. Mesmerizing really.


Sometimes I love the internet.

via Kottke

"Business Time"

Going along with recent subject matter:

Lets Talk Birth Control (Part 2)

The reason why I started this (somewhat) embarrassing post is because I felt like a) doctors don't warn about the side effect of a lowered sex drive when taking the pill 2) most women I talked to, saw the pill as their only choice.

When I realized the pill wasn't a good match for me, I started looking around for other options. Of course there was the condom. But no one I know, feels great JUST using a condom. There's just too many ways to screw it up. And while we are talking about condoms can I just say to all the women out there who sing the praises of condoms: Do you really like the way a condom feels? Honestly? Because I hate condoms and I don't understand how other women like it. As for men, let's be honest, I have never heard a man say a good thing about a condom, unless he was on tv and being paid. Don't get me wrong, condoms are important and I would never encourage sex without condoms if you aren't in a long-lasting, trusting, monogamous relationship but COME ON (a la GOB from Arrested Development) condoms are just not as fun as your Sex Ed teacher made them out. For once I would like someone on tv say how much condoms suck and then not die of syphallis & AIDS by the end of the show.

Moving on, there were several other contraceptive methods to look into. Most of the choices like the Depo-Provera shot and (certain IUDs) had the same disadvantage as the pill, the would alter my hormone levels, something I did not want. Also, the IUD are typically recommended for women who have had children, being childless I didn't want to risk my future fertility with a copper IUD (one which does not alter hormone levels). There was just one last choice - the diaphragm. When I mentioned it to my doctor, she tried to dissuade me away from the diaphragm and offered, again, the pill. It was frustrating to say the least. The reasoning was that I was young and my life style didn't fit the diaphragm demographic (according to her). It took me going to a different doctor to finally get the prescription I wanted and needed. Guess what I loved it. Yes it's a little more work for the woman, but giving my other choices I prefer the diaphragm.

The diaphragm is not ideal - but it seems like not enough women know about it or trust it. It does take some planning if you don't want to interrupt having sex, but if you are willing to interrupt sex for putting on a condom, this is pretty comparable. Also, if you know you want to have sex you can completely plan for it before hand. If you are curious about the diaphragm, the first place to start is by trying out the sponge method (Elaine!). I know it's not for everyone but if some of you are looking for alternatives, diaphragm is a good start.

P.S. Pearatty has mentioned in the comment section that it might be the specific birth control pill that is making women have a lower sex drive and that like everything you have to try different ones to get the right one for you. This is definitely an option for some,(I tried four different ones before I gave up) but it wasn't an option for me. I still continue to hate the pill.

Okay, now end the PSA posts!

Lets Talk Birth Control (Part 1)

I know, kind of a taboo topic, especially since I'm not a married lady and can't hide behind the euphemism of "trying or not trying to have a baby." Side note: I always found it funny how people would talk about couples "trying to have a baby" aka fucking. I guess it's not good to ask at a dinner party if the newlyweds are fucking like rabbits to make a little bunny, "trying" is more polite than "fucking" it would seem. So where was I? Oh yeah, birth control, it's kind of important and I feel people don't talk about it enough.

First of all I'm here to tell you that I absolutely HATE the pill. The pill is not your friend. And it's not because I'm lazy and forgetful, although I am. If the pill was the miracle pill the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies try to sell then I would be all for it. Alas, every doctor I have ever spoken to about birth control leaves one important detail out, and it's not the one about potentially getting cancer or stroke from the pill, which hello? warning signs! The little fact they forget to mention is that the pill works by making women NOT WANT TO HAVE SEX. Basically the reason why you aren't getting pregnant is because the pill has made the penis the least desirable object to be near you.

The way the pill works (please excuse my minimal medical understanding) is that it tricks the body into thinking the woman is pregnant. So you can see how this is a a bit of a problem. One takes the pill because they are horny individuals who don't feel the need to have kids, but who want to have as much sex as possible, but the pill makes them feel as though their bodies think they are pregnant 24/7. None of the doctors ever brought up this issue. I would be all psyched up to have a sex partner, start taking the pill and then lose most of my sex drive. Maybe it's my own experience, but sex sucked while I was on the pill. Most of the time I wanted to be doing anything else, cleaning my room, going food shopping, organizing my financial files, sex was just not something I looked forward to.

Coming up: Part Two, where I talk about awesomeness of diaphragms and the myth of condoms (they suck (no pun intended)).

Dizee Rascal "Bonkers"

This is the number one single in Britain right now. Peter played this song for me this weekend and now, days later, it popped into my head. The whole song is done with live instruments. It pretty catchy after a few times you listen.



I wake up everyday it’s a daydream
Everythin’ in my life isn’t what it seems
I wake up just to go back to sleep
I act real shallow but I’m in to deep
And all I care about is sex and violence
And a heavy bass line is my kind of silence
Everybody says I got to get a grip
But I let sanity give me the slip

Some people think I’m bonkers
But I just think I’m free
Man I’m just living my life
There nothing crazy about me
Some people pay for thrills
but I get mine for free
Man I’m just living my life
There nothing crazy about me

Massachusetts: A Monarchy

"Ha ha, Memeorandum’s aggregator has a sense of humor. It links that Hill item to this Red State one, decrying Obama’s denunciation of America’s leadership in the world, the part where he said yesterday, “No world order that elevates one nation or groups of people over another will succeed.” Obama may not understand America, its ideals, and its unique role in the world, but neither apparently does he understand Massachusetts, where the dominate political order remains one group of people, elevated over all others."

- Jules Crittenden on the "appointment" of Paul Kirk to Kennedy's seat. You know the person Kennedy's widow and sons selected. Because that's how things are here in Massachusetts. You can say I'm a tad bit repulsed.

Can't Stop Looking At This

From the latest episode of Mad Men.

Commiserating

I'm never one to feel better when others I know are in bad spot. Even if I don't like the person, it doesn't make me feel better if something bad is happening to them. It doesn't comfort me. And yet, sometimes reading about people like me who are struggling to find their place and financial stability is very reassuring. Don't get me wrong, I wish them the best, but it's nice to know I'm not the only one pinching pennies and (trying) to focus on the things I have, instead of all the things I don't.

Best of the Best

Supposedly best places to eat certain foods. My mother's kitchen circa 1996 still wins my vote. I've eaten at like two places on this list.

Shana Tova!

Happy New Year! I hope 5770 is a sweet and healthy year for everyone. May you spend it with people you love and who love you.



video via Samtron

This Time Of Year

This is probably the best time of year to be living in New England. The sky gets all moody, flocks of birds start migrating (south I presume), and the trees start catching on fire ever so slightly. The temperature facilitates between a crisp cool wind and the gentle warmth of the sun. It's close to perfect as you can get.

Last night I happened to pass an old cemetery I used to see all the time as a kid. To my left the clouds were purplish-gray, to my right the sun was slowly setting and the sky was clear. The juxtaposition of dark and light was mesmerizing.

I tend to find large cemeteries to be incredibly beautiful places, one tends to forget you are among the dead. In fact the sounds of nature get amplified - everything the trees, the birds, the grass, and even the wind is more immediate - life, or at least nature, reasserts itself among the dead.

Hypocrite Assholes Who Represent Me

Politically savvy move in the short term. Unfortunately, people have very short memories. Fuck them. Seriously. Represent

Quote of the Day

For Mr Putin, the lesson of today’s decision is clear. Intransigence pays dividends because the US and the European Union lack the patience or determination to face Moscow down. That is a lesson that send alarm bells ringing in the corridors of power of Russia’s former Soviet dominions.

- the ramifications of appeasing Russia by scratching the plans for a missile defense in Czech Republic.
Kick your friends in balls, while kissing the ass of your enemies, equals Obama's smart foreign policy. Fucking amateur.

Update: Jules Crittenden wonders:
"The big question looming now is, how soon do we hit the tipping point where he starts to make Jimmy look good?

At the risk of sounding like one of the kids on a long car ride … are we there yet?"

Cropping & Twisting The Truth

I know it is shocking that Newsweek would take a perfectly innocent photograph and edit to fit it's vicious image of Dick Chaney. David Hume Kennerly writes about his photo being cut up to reflect Newsweek's editorial fantasies of the "butcher" Cheney.

I took that photograph at his daughter Liz’s home during a two-day assignment, and was shocked by its usage. The meat on the cutting board wasn’t the only thing butchered. In fact, Newsweek chose to crop out two-thirds of the original photograph, which showed Mrs. Cheney, both of their daughters, and one of their grandchildren, who were also in the kitchen, getting ready for a simple family dinner.

However, Newsweek’s objective in running the cropped version was to illustrate its editorial point of view, which could only have been done by shifting the content of the image so that readers just saw what the editors wanted them to see. This radical alteration is photo fakery. Newsweek’s choice to run my picture as a political cartoon not only embarrassed and humiliated me and ridiculed the subject of the picture, but it ultimately denigrated my profession.

Photojournalists fight the credibility battle every day, from combating digitally faked photos to being lumped in with the paparazzi, a group of camera-carrying cretins who have no respect for anything, particularly the people they hound. In the case of my Cheney photo, Newsweek is guilty not just of blurring but of blowing up that line between tabloid-style sensationalism and honest photojournalism.

Someone should have told Mr.Kennerly that places like Newsweek are no longer places of true journalism but of partisan hackery at best.

Bonus: Check out Frank J. De Maria, the vice president of corporate communications at Newsweek, condescending "defense" of the cropping. Pure gold. "Did we use the image to make an editorial point — in this case, about the former vice president’s red-blooded, steak-eating, full-throated defense of his views and values? Yes, we did."

I'mmma Let You FInish

This is pure awesome. I know for most this already old news. But each entry makes me laugh and laugh.

Some of my favorites:

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

...or maybe millions of people. High resolution photo of the 9/12 Tea Party rally taken from atop the Capitol Building.

via Allahpundit's Twitter

Only Klosterman

First of Klosterman does something quite awesome that few writers would dare to do and pull it off so well. He reviews the remastered box set of some obscure band from the sixties called The Beatles. There is so many great parts of the article, I had a hard time picking my favorite. However, when some uses the word "mustachioed" well I have to quote it. Here is reviewing that hard to come by album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

1967 proved to be a turning point for the Beatles—the overwhelming lack of public interest made touring a fiscal impossibility, subsequently forcing them to focus exclusively on studio recordings. Spearheaded by the increasingly mustachioed Fake Paul, the four Beatles donned comedic Technicolor dreamcoats, consumed 700 sheets of mediocre acid on the roof of the studio, and proceeded to make Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a groundbreaking album no one actually likes. A concept album about finding a halfway decent song for Ringo, Sgt. Pepper has a few satisfactory moments (“Lovely Rita” totally nails the experience of almost having sex with a city employee), but this is only B+ work. It mostly seems like a slightly superior incarnation of The Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request, a record that (ironically) came out seven months after this one. Pop archivists might be intrigued by this strange parallel between the Beatles and the Stones catalogue—it often seems as if every interesting thing The Rolling Stones ever did was directly preceded by something the Beatles had already accomplished, and it almost feels like the Stones completely stopped evolving once the Beatles broke up in 1970. But this, of course, is simply a coincidence. I mean, what kind of bozo would compare the Beatles to The Rolling Stones?

If the box set was under a $100, maybe I could buy it. And what's up with the whole limited edition of mono. I shake my fist at The Beatles, and especially for the mustachioed Fake Paul, real Paul would never have allowed this!

Girl Soldier

I loved these photos of IDF girls in the army. It's not the usual bodacious babes one typically sees, although the girls are beautiful. It's a more intimate portrait of children being thrown into a very adult situation. I can't imagine what impact it would have on American culture, if right after high school everyone would be required to do at least two years of military service?

Rachel Papo's photo essay is worth checking out.

09/11/09

I just want to remember for what today is and how eight years ago all of us were changed forever. It's gray and cold outside, a sharp contrast to the warm & sunny day of eight years ago.

Birds on a Wire

So simple and beautiful.

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Thanks to Angela for the tip.

Oh The Incivility!

Eh, whatevs - it's not like the guy has a point or anything. Incidentally, you can contribute to Joe Wilson here.
Oh and remember the the great civility of the Democrats during the Bush years.


via Allapundit

An appropriate aside from @realdawnsummers: "Newsflash: Politics = my side good, your side bad. If your side does something it's bad, my side does same thing it's good. #classdismissed"

Power To You Who Can Make Sense Of This

Makes my head hurt just thinking of all the relationships created.

The Details

Life is funny, it's the details today that you want to cut out that later will seem so endearing and vital.

Take People At Their Word

You know
They call them "killer whales"
But you seem surprised
When it pinned you down
To the bottom of the tank
Where you can't turn around
It took half your leg
And both your lungs
And I craved I ate hearts of sharks
I know you know it

Neko Case's "People Got A Lotta Nerve"

I don't know why people (especially women, especially me) can trust the actual words that come out other people's mouths. We sit and analyze instead of just taking people at their word.

Neki Case's voice just blows me away. It has this amazing strong quality while still being vulnerable. #whatisthismagic?