Katherine Heigl’s acting career: piteous

This movie* is either about

a) a blowjob

b) blah blah single girl blah marriage blah blah blah empowerment blah

If you guessed b), you are (unfortunately) right.  Here’s the trailer:

*Based on the preview, I’m assuming this poster is meant to convey that women are starry-eyed, tender, emotional, and CRAZY, while men are simply big throbbing cocks.  But the heart in the graphic is a little confusing.  Is it in the woman’s head because she thinks instead of feeling? Or does she emote instead of thinking?  Is the man’s sex drive supplanting both thinking AND feeling? etc., etc.

Song Wars

One of my favorite things about YouTube is when I search for a song or music video and end up finding a cover I never knew existed. For example, I had no idea that The Beatles covered Please Mr. Postman.  I wasn’t too surprised, since early Beatles stuff is mostly a derived mish-mash of  Doo-Wop ballads, early Motown, and Rock ‘n Roll. 

Here is the original by The Marvelettes. I want to say the song was written by Smokey Robinson, but I’m not sure.

They bring it, obviously. 

The Beatles’ version is pretty good, but slower and less catchy.  It  just doesn’t hold a candle to the original :

Then I found a second cover by The Carpenters.  Don’t get excited; it sucks.  However, the song’s crappiness is almost redeemed by its bizarre video, which mostly consists of The Carpenters running–groovily!–around Disneyland, and Mickey Mouse himself portraying the postman.  The best part, though, is the brief intrusion of psychedelic mirrors and pinwheels:

Too sunburned to do anything but lie in bed and watch YouTube

Featuring the young and heartbreakingly endearing River Phoenix.

I will be only mildly surprised if I wake up to this tomorrow morning

Look at that cute little blastocyst!

Well isn’t this something: An opinion released last November by the ethics committee of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is coming under scrutiny.

“Among other things, it says physicians “have the duty to refer patients in a timely manner to other providers if they do not feel they can in conscience provide the standard reproductive services that patients request.”"

And by “standard reproductive services,” they mean everything from abortion referrals to emergency contraception to regular birth control pills. Allowing doctors with ethical qualms about birth control to make referrals seems like a good compromise, but what if they’re in a rural area with no doctors nearby? What if the woman’s insurance doesn’t cover the other doctor? What if she doesn’t have insurance? What if she had to take time off work and get day care for her kids to go to that doctor’s appointment, and going to another one would be a financial hardship? What if she needs the pill for a non-pregnancy related medical condition?

How about the fact that these people shouldn’t have gone into gynecology if they are morally outraged about medical services nearly all women use at some point in their lives? And seriously, there’s no real reason to believe these doctors would even give referrals. Take this guy:

“I’m not going to refer someone to a hit man to put to death someone that’s inconvenient in their life,” says Joseph DeCook, a retired Ob/Gyn from Holland, Mich., and vice-president of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “I wouldn’t do that. This is the very same thing. I’m not going to refer a pregnant woman to a physician who will purposefully terminate her pregnancy — better known as purposefully kill the unborn child. I’m just not going to do it.”

If a bunch of Jehovah’s Witnesses became surgeons and then refused to allow blood transfusions on their patients, instead saying they’d refer them, would anyone be sympathetic?

I had a somewhat unpleasant experience trying to get Plan B, and while that was frustrating and humiliating, I can’t imagine what it would be like to go to my gynecologist and have him refuse to prescribe me birth control. There should be a do-not-patronize list of these doctors on the internet somewhere so it’d be easier to avoid them.

Black is the new president, bitch

UPDATE: Video available here.

Racism : America :: peanuts : the circus

This is a picture of the crowd of spectators who gathered to watch the lynching of Jesse Washington, a 17 year old African-American farmhand who was beaten, mutilated and burned to death in Waco, Texas, in 1916. It is also the front of a postcard. There are other, more gruesome photographic postcards of Washington’s lynching, including one of his body after it was doused with coal oil and burned (which I won’t post here). Here’s the back of it:

It reads: “This is the barbecue we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe.”

This woman’s boyfriend would never let her smoke in bed

I want this book. 

Obama, officially > sliced bread

From a diner in Mississippi:

“At age 60, after living in Greenville for 35 years, Buck is a black man who remembers when things were different.

Asked about Obama propelling his campaign as far as he has, he said, “You can’t believe it. It’s the greatest thing since salt.”"

The greatest thing since salt.

Cottage (porn) industry

I saw this at the Thomas Kinkade Gallery at the mall today. I am sort of fascinated by his paintings. What makes them so wretched? As far as subject matter goes, they are exactly the same as the decorative printed plates that my great-grandparents hung in their dining room, but somehow Kinkade’s cottages manage to suck harder than anything you could buy at the Sear’s home sale in 1976.

Is it how moist and swampy everything looks? Like all his ponds are full of malarial mosquitos? Or is it the weird things he does with light–the unnatural shadows, and the windows that glow bright yellow even during the day?

And this painting, I mean, Jesus. Kinkade may be the only artist ever who successfully made the Sleeping Beauty castle look sinister. There’s the sunset in the background (note that ALL the street lamps are already on), the slick pavement. And those Mickey Mouse balloons in the upper right hand corner are, like, evil totems.