Satan for kids, or Get thee behind me, Pikachu!
This children’s book on ritual abuse — a product, no doubt, of the ’80s Satanism scare — is the kind of thing my mom would have sold at her ¨ber-fundamentalist bookstore alongside the Jack Chick tracts and Dungeons and Dragons exposés, so for me it inspires a dull sort of dread rather than surprise or [...]
The hopeful cover of Editor & Publisher
“Snagged this from my managing editor’s desk,” said a friend who works at a newspaper, following the announcement that Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews will be shuttered. “The teaser in the upper right… Oof.”
Feminine hygiene ad of your nightmares
Whoa. I thought the midcentury Lysol ones were the worst, but this Tampax ad collected amid some of the more misogynistic print campaigns of yore is singularly dreadful in its own way. (Via.)
Click for the full image at your peril.
Marianna, FL teacher decodes “change” with racist slur
Just as the cockles of my heart were warming over Ralph Stanley’s banjo pickin’ Obama radio spot, a reader in North Florida sends along a little something that guarantees they’ll be frozen over till at least sometime next April.
The Jackson County School Board has taken action against a teacher who apparently made racial commentary on [...]
Rebutting The New Yorker’s most famous cartoon
NB to professors searching for a colleague’s name + “pussy”: If you are going to troll the Internet for images of or information about someone’s genitals, you might want to do it from someplace other than the university where you work.
Especially when your last name and first initial are embedded in your IP address. [...]
Wearing red nail polish and other wifely demerits
On a 1930s Wifely Rating Scale, republished in the APA’s Monitor on Psychology, using slang or profanity alone nets you a motherfucking negative 5 points. (Via Crooked House; apologies if you already saw and laughed over this three weeks ago at Jezebel.)
Overall, I probably score something in the neighborhood of -105. And for [...]
Bedbugs “just itching” to tell you favorite Bible stories
Maybe it’s me, but I’m thinking the Bedbug Bible Gang might want to consider rebranding for the urban market. Or, hey, if that’s outside the budget, at least drop the “just itching to” pitch.
The scene above is from Esther Fest, in which the “Bedbugs share the story of Esther in a royalty rousing [...]
Little-known risks of reading Bolaño
Texas Inmate No. 1385412 ordered a copy of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives. When it arrived, the novel was rerouted to a relative in Austin, after a prison inspector determined that it might “encourage homosexual or deviant criminal sexual behavior” and be “detrimental to the offender’s rehabilitation.”
The disqualifying passage, which appears on Page 39, describes [...]
Fifteen seconds for In Search of Lost Time
A mid-November deadline looms, and between work and writing, I don’t have much steam left for books, email, or blogging. In fact, I’m at about 65% on the brain-deadness scale. Which translates into a whole lot of YouTube.
So while my mother-in-law, Jane, recently enjoyed all 3500 pages of In Search of Lost Time, [...]
Baby got book (or, she just looks so… righteous)
Of course church leaders excel at dreaming up grim holiday festivities for children, but religious adaptations of popular songs are where they really shine.
(Thanks to CAAF and The Mumpsimus for the flashbacks.)
Lysol: for bacteria, viruses, parasites — and you
Someone just forwarded me this unbelievable, but apparently actual Lysol feminine hygiene ad. “A man marries a woman because he loves her,” the copy reads:
So instead of blaming him if married love begins to cool, she should question herself. Is she truly trying to keep her husband and herself eager, happy, married lovers? [...]
Never mind the writing, how ’bout the photo?
First Galleycat dug up some publishing hotties. Today on the site we hear from some naked authors. The solicitation at the end of the post suggests we can expect more of the same.
Why not get ahead of the curve — anticipate the next series? If you’ve got any nude photographs of yourself [...]
New Times seeks to correct Miami’s silicone shortage
Yesterday several South Florida friends and I received this boob job contest announcement from the Miami New Times.
The New Times recently bought out The Village Voice. Here’s hoping new Village Voice editor David Blum resists these kinds of (yes, I’m going to say it) augmentations.
In which the word “museum” becomes meaningless
At Kentucky’s Creation Museum, which opens next spring, dinosaurs hang out with some giraffes, elephants, and flamingos near Noah’s ark. The “casting of a fossilized print is presented as a human footprint found among dinosaur footprints.” Never mind science; the place looks solely to the Bible for its evidence.
[T]he literal interpretation … contends [...]
Practical city living, #7
Yes, it’s true. Your friend’s choice of hobbit to hop into the sack with may be baffling. But please do not call Frodo a fudge-packer.
Especially not in front of a fudge-packer.