Um, sorry, tricked ya. I've been working long hours this past week and spent today attending a high school reunion, so there is no Sunday Night Interwebs Roundup tonight. Please don't cry yo'selves to sleep, gentle reader(s?).

Console yourselves with one of my fave Brandon Hardesty re-enactments:

My first perception of McCain’s choice of VP was, “Crap. Crap crap crap. He chose a woman. A woman I’ve heard of and read articles about and crap, it’s a woman. A pro-life woman. That’s smart. That changes everything.”

I am inclined to think that McCain generally dislikes women. But I also believe he would do pretty much anything to get elected, including selecting as running mate one of those people with boobies who are supposed to wear pretty dresses and cook meatloaf for dinner and pop out 10 born-again Christian, God-fearing, Walmart-shopping babies. Or, you know, a mouse-huntin', rifle-totin' hockey mom.

Fortch, the blogosphere/intertubeland educated me about her microscopic resume, including serving as mayor of Wasilla, AK (pop: 6700) and her own mini-scandal (Troopergate). I figured since I’D heard of her, she had to be experienced and well-known, even as Alaska gov, but OK, turns out not so much.

McCain is now 72 years old. If his VP has to take over, is this really a person who is ready to run this country? I think we all know the answer to that.


P.S., My boyfriend loves moose. It's pretty much his spirit animal. He is going to hate this person.

Happy 89th Birthday to my cool-as-hell grandma!

I am psyched about the new Madewell 1937 store that's now open in Tysons Corner. It's the funkier, cheaper version of J. Crew, who I have come to dislike for its proto-First Lady wear and soaring prices. Really, who does J. Crew think it is? If you can afford to buy their clothes these days, you're actually probably NOT shopping there.

But seriously? If the model above were blonde, I would have taken this shot for a rejected cover of Debbie Gibson's Electric Youth.

And I prefer my Youth to be more Sonic than Electric.


My other issue with Madewell? Their models all look like seven-foot tall cowboys who have pursued freelance work as World War I flying aces. I love to look at these clothes, but I think I would actually mock myself for wearing them.

... That might not be enough to prevent me from buying that mango-colored cardi, though.

And I fell asleep during his speech.

Sad, sad news: GLBT activist Del Martin (far right), who was part of the first couple to legally wed in California in June, has died at the age of 87.

Martin was born in 1921, studied journalism at Berkeley, married, had a daughter and divorced before she met the love of her life, Phyllis Lyon (left), in 1950. The couple married in San Francisco when marriage was briefly legalized there in 2004, and were the first couple to marry in California in June after the CA Supreme Court OK'ed gay marriage.

My first reaction on hearing her death was immediate sorrow that she only got to enjoy three months of marriage this time around with her partner of 58 years. But at least she lived to see it.

Recommended listening: “Feminist Housewives,” Bitch & Animal

• Those two guys are in a statistical dead heat. However! Here’s something you may not have thought of: Those wacky pollsters only call LANDLINES. Now, who’s most likely to NOT HAVE LANDLINES? The young, the urban, the less well-off ... Now, wanna take a gander at whom those peeps might be voting for? Right. Interesting that we haven't heard anything about this fact, since I feel like this is probably skewing the polls quite a bit.

• The Midwest Teen Sex Show has a new episode up! If you’ve never seen this Webcast before, um ... It’s not what you might be thinking.

• “Bush declares 'major disaster' area in Florida.”
Yeah, well, I claim a ‘major disaster’ area in pretty much everything Bush declares, so we’re even. (But seriously, you can make a donation toward Hurricane Fay disaster relief at the American Red Cross Web site.)

• Plus, Much Glorious Bonus Learnings! I learned from the above CNN article that someone other than Jeb Bush is now governor of Florida. My research (yeah, thanks, Wikipedia) tells me that he’s been out of office since January 2, 2007. Way to keep up with the times!

• No matter what you post on Twitter, you always sound like a jerky jerk. Then again, so do my friends usually.

• Feministing's Weekly Feminist Reader is up.

• Bestest video I saw this week:

Blood and Guts in High School
Kathy Acker
1978; 165 pp.


I read this because it's on the list of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die (...Only 991 to go 'til I can, well, die!!! Ew.) and it sounded, well... just disturbing enough to be interesting.

In fact, I found it totally disturbing and violent and weird and obscene. Keep in mind, I don't use "obscene" meaning it should be banned, just that it's really, REALLY naughty. The book is supposed to be the journal of a punk girl living as a sex slave, cobbled together with thoughts, dreams, a long discussion on "The Scarlet Letter," pornographic drawings, you know, the usual.

It definitely has a punk/S&M bent going. The first half was a struggle to get through but later on there were some nice, though brief, pieces of writing. I've read that smart people love this book and dumb people hate it. I still don't know what to think of it, so I suppose that puts me somewhere in the middle.

In closing, I recommend AGAINST reading this in public because I just never knew when a drawing of huge genitalia would pop out at me.

Consider yourself warned.

Sure, Barack Obama announced his running mate, but let's devote CNN's resources to video interviews on Britney Spears' new diet plan!

I especially love how CNN host Brooke Anderson obvy has some inkling that, oh, 1200 calories a day is a tad extreme, and her correspondent stops her in her tracks with an admission that at her "boot camp" (they can't call it "fat camp" if you're already skinny) that was her calorie limit too. And poor Brooke Anderson just soldiers on, trying to convince her panel that Britney's regime is extreme: "...But not for an extended period of time, right?" (Do we need PANELS of people to discuss Britney's new body? Yes. Yes, we do.)

The word "hero" gets thrown about so much these days, but when Brooke starts in on how Britney never really had a weight problem to begin with, well, let's just say she's the greatest American hero since John McCain decided to stick around for more torture. *cough* But he doesn't like to talk about that.

She's got a point. Brit Brit popped out two kids back-to-back, was all sorts of bipolar and jacked up on boatloads of Cheetos. (God I want her life. For the Cheetos endorsements, anyway.) Really, I think it's OK for her to have been, oh, a size 12 or so for a bit.

"I think you have to remember though, that Britney sort of helped to repopularize the midriff," intones (what IS "intones"? but somehow, she's intoning here) VH1's Janell Snowden.

So that means she must never change, just like Subway's Jared has a no-weight-gain clause in his contract. Mmm plastic meat!

Um, anyway, nice to see a MSM anchor who gets it. Even if she won't take a hint from her Britney-must-be-as-thin-as-Nicole-Richie-before-she-got-knocked-up-and-thrown-in-the-clink-for-72-hours interviewees.

God, I love Sarah Haskins.

There are two things Mike & Chris hate: bright colors and women who smile.

Nonetheless, I'm trembling with desire for the jackets in their new fall line.

First of all, I'd be pretty down with sporting this not-a-jacket but not any other identifiable article ofclothing ($164) to the Place of Media where I work. The tweed pants are nice too, but I think that women who weight more than 17 pounds aren't allowed to wear tweed pants, so I'm out.







.... Are those ... leather pants? Um, well, if so, I'd declare those safely out of the range of work-acceptable attire for my sort of folk. I'm digging that bib-slash-military look around the neck of this get-up ($383), though.

Hey, lady, what are you looking so grumpy about? Is your Botox mingling with your hair bleach and creating deadly, deadly fumes? You're wearing like $2,000 bucks' worth of clothes. Can't you look at least a LITTLE excited about it?

I can't afford a $383 Kimball Zip Up Jacket, and I'm doing OK! I'm able to throw back my IKEA covers every morning, jam my feet into some Target boots and shuffle off to work sans $383 Kimball Zip Up Jacket. Though if I could have a $383 Kimball Zip Up Jacket, I would.



It's a pea coat! No, it's a khaki car coat! No, it's an Anson Zip Up Hoodie ($194). I like the asymmetrical lines and the model's silvery eye shadow, so that's good enough for me.


Finally, I would probably sell most of my belongings for these boots (and at $565, I'd actually only need to sell, like, maybe my couch and one other big thing). But please don't test me on that.


Just THINKING about the potential suppleness of these babies makes my heels start to bleed from those unforgiving Martens in my closet. (I've been mashing their heels with a mallet daily, I swear.)

Referred from Jezebel comes the uncomfortably named What to Expect When You're Aborting.


Recommended Reading: This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor by Susan Wicklund. I read it in May and could barely it down. I even cried once. I feel like everyone who's a human should read this, prolife, prochoice, everybody.

I look forward to reading about the above blogger's journey, who asks, Where's the Juno of the abortion world?

Ricky Martin is the proud father of twin baby boys born via surrogacy. I strongly suspect he has a partner quietly waiting in the wings to raise these babies along with Martin. Sure, it’s polite of the MSM to not mull over this fact publicly. But frankly, it irritates the heck out of me that people don’t feel comfortable enough to be open about who they are.

Then again, Martin could just be a cleavage-loving, uber-straight hunk of man who just hasn’t found the right girl to bring home to momma. But I don’t think so.

While I'm sooooo not a fan of him, I wish all the best to the new family, however they roll.

OK, this is great. Those long annoying URLs (say, from Google maps or an online catalog page) can be transformed into a short, easy-to-type, easy-to-share URL courtesy of TinyURL.com.

My two favorite places to get free music:

LastFM - free weekly downloads of dozens of edgy, indie, you're-so-cool-can-I-please-be-you music

And astonishingly, UrbanOutfitters.com, which only offers one playlist (around 20 songs) per season, but is consistently awesome. The only problem is the music puts me in a shopping mood. Can't imagine why.

Heard of Ideeli? It's a fashion free-for-all site that lets you purchase luxury pieces at deeply discounted prices ... but the clock is ticking. You never know when a new item will pop up. Members are e-mailed when an item is about to be available for sale. "Second row" members (meaning those with a free membership ... like me) can't purchase until an hour after "first row" members have had their chance.

The sale times are random (think 11:41 a.m.) which sorta kept me glued to my e-mail account for the first few days, but I haven't purchased anything yet ... although I've been tempted. (Seriously, Moschino sunglasses ($95 on ideeli)? SO futuristically cute.)

The other catch? Membership itself is usually closed. You need an invite code (I got one through Spa Week) or you can get on their mailing list to hear when membership opens. So if you have a lot of time on your hands (and a thirst for $900 handbags going for a mere $500), this is your happy hunting ground.

Kori: Have you read Breaking Dawn?

Me: Reading it now. You?

Kori: Yeah, reading it now.

Me: I skipped to the end though. I had to know.

Kori: It's a total soap opera.

Me: They always are!

Kori: Yeah ... I decided to put it down for the night when the pack was wanting to attack now that they knew Bella was preggers w/ a monster. What a ridiculous sentence.

Me: Hahaha, yeah the next whole part is really boring. Also, why is every character so emotionally constipated?

Kori: I get SO frustrated w/ Bella. She's literally the worst heroine ever. If you can even call her that.

Me: Sometimes the drama they manufacture among themselves doesn't even make SENSE. Yet, we read.

Kori: But I don't know if I'd ever want my teenage daughter reading about a girl who DEVOTES her life to a guy.

Me: You know what it is, it's porn for teenage girls. A guy who only holds them all night long and doesn't want sex.

Kori: What do the vampires do when Bella gets her period?

Me: Also, people are SO stupid in the book. There's a part when they use donor human blood to drink (not really a spoiler).
Edward: Don't worry, no one died for this.
Bella: But whatever do you possibly mean???
Edward: I'll explain later.
Me: Um, hello?!?!?! People don't need to DIE to bleed. It's donor blood? IDIOT.

Kori: Hmm, yeah, they should just sip on some donor blood for special occasions.

Me: Like in champagne flutes.

The D.C. mindset falls somewhere between “work” and “work work work.” I consider myself laid back, but I do triathlons and read 50 books a year for fun.

I’ve worked in media technically since I was 11, when I was made copy editor of the middle school paper. There has to be a special place in heaven for a pre-pubescent girl who knows what Stet means. Just sayin.’

Because I’m supposedly oh-so-laid back, I have zero career trajectory but greatly enjoy (or maybe I just enjoy the stories) tasks such as assigning a freelancer to write a review of Flipper’s grave, ghost-writing the blog of a famous teen pop star (I don’t think I’m allowed to say who) and editing college application essays for a company whose tagline says something about all their editors having gone to Harvard.

I did not go to Harvard.

Well, technically, I visited once.




So who am I to be writing this blog? I’ve managed a Webby-nominated online show ... and I’ve also interviewed celebrities so minor and faded that I’m embarrassed to even say who they are. I was on my feet for 20 hours covering W’s second inauguration ... and I also provided coverage on quilt shows. In July. In Tampa. From Washington.

The funny thing about it is that I’ve always worked for huge media companies. It’s just that in huge media companies, there are television anchors and featured columnists, and there are also people doing the inane things that you’d never even imagine someone doing.

That someone is me, and just because I read 50 blogs a day, and download hacks for The Sims 2 in my spare time, and make tomatoes in photographs look their reddest ... Um. Well, it means something. Maybe I should ask a featured columnist.