>For every day that the planned cyanide attack was averted (it was called off 45 days before the set date), the Bush administration cut anti-terrorism funding to New York City by almost 1% (the budget was reduced by about 40%). See? No money is being wasted since the attack was cancelled.

No need to worry, good lady citizens of NYC. Gas masks look awesome with mini skirts and stiletto heels! (They cover chin hairs and ‘staches nicely, too, so I can slack off on my plucking!) Get one now and be ahead of the trend!

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>Spoiler Alert! If you have not seen “X-Men: The Last Stand” and intend to do so and do not want to know how it ends, do not read on.

I went to see the new X-Men movie last night. I had really liked the second moive, and never seen the first one so I can’t comment on it. This installment was not nearly as good as the previous one. Sure, it was entertaining, but not quite $10.75 of entertainment and the end annoyed me. (Yeah – movies are now $10.75 in Manhattan. I understand theaters are barely hanging in there, but every time I go it is 25 cents more to see a film. At what point is this a self-defeating proposal – need to raise prices to make money, but raise them so high that no one goes any more? Anyway, I’m not sure how many movies I’ll see this summer at that price. Certainly for the new Pirates of the Carribean flick and Snakes on a Plane. I loved Clerks and the preview for Clerks II did look great, but I may have to rent that sucker. End of digression.)

Anyway, X-Men: The Last Stand is again on of those us-against-them, good-vs.-evil films in which you can sort of feel like the good guys triumphed. Yet it was also about man’s redemptive/deathly love for woman. As The Explorer pointed out, wasn’t it great that Wolverine saved Jean Grey (and the world) by admitting his love for her, which then leads her to die? If it was done well, it could’ve been touching, but I heard giggles and I don’t think that it brought a fuckin’ tear to anyone’s eye. A super macho director like Brett Ratner just had no idea how to pull it off.

The final verdict: cool that the most powerful mutant is a woman, sucks that she can’t control it and it (and the love of Wolverine, who tries to help her get control over her powers) kills her.

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>There is a blog – I won’t name names – that I despise for a variety of reasons. However, I check it from time to time because I like frustrating myself and I can’t help but want to know what ridiculous crap is expounded upon as if there is some wisdom behind it, which then enrages me. Not long ago, a post ended by posing a question: if women can use their feminine charms to get men to serve us, why should we ever do anything for ourselves?

Oh, I don’t know – maybe for self-respect? Self-determination? Pride in one’s abilities? A sense of accomplishment?

Silly moi!

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>An article about The Price is Right in the New York Times Arts section caught my eye on Tuesday as I was looking for the crossword puzzle (which, annoyingly I did not finish – I swear senility is setting in folks). When my sister and I were growing up, we loooooved The Price is Right. As the Times article asks:

Who under 50… did not spend dozens of childhood mornings zoned out on the couch, playing along with the Dice Game or screaming at the fool from San Diego about to overbid on a bag of corn chips?

Sister and I can do one better than that. It was just that much more fun to cheer on contestants when you pretended that you were related to them. For example, we might decide that an elderly contestant was our grandfather. Helping “Grandpa” win by shouting at the TV was about as effective as my dad yelling at the Bears to make certain plays, but it really did add an extra level of excitement. (However, the entire house did not shake in the same way when we jumped up and down while watching Price as it did when my dad did so as he watched the Bears.) Ah, those were the days, I tell ya.

Beyond evoking warm-fuzzy childhood memories of wasting away in front of the tube, the Price article also made some surprisingly good points about the type of contestants on many game shows these days. Bob Barker himself noted:

On most game shows today you will see contestants between 20 and 45 who are physically attractive. We have people on ‘The Price Is Right’ who are between 20 and 45 who are physically attractive too…But we have people who, when they became 18, the first thing they did was come to ‘The Price Is Right,’ and I had a big winner on a recent show who was 95. We deliberately select contestants that are black, white and brown. We deliberately pick contestants from all over the United States. We have fat people, thin, short, tall, you name it.

Seriously, when was the last time that a fat woman appeared on TV unless it was a weight loss show or talk show episode that highlighted the deviant status of women who did not fit the paradigm of womanliness in popular culture? (Of which being fat was usually only one sin; the others usually include being poor and/or not white, such as the ever popular and classic “You Dress Too Sexy for Your Weight.”)

We’ve hit a sad state of affairs when I’m looking at The Price is Right as a model of positive television.

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>OK, so my friend GynaGirl got me thinking about a potentially useful purpose of snatch waxing. It seems that pubic hair can go grey. Like GynaGirl, I hate being faced with my impending elderly status, so if all my pubes were missing, I would never need to see a grey one. Makes sense, right?

Nah, not worth it. I already know that I am getting old because I am increasingly senile. If I find a grey pube, the odds are pretty damn high at this point that I won’t remember it for long.

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>While I was steaming over the fucked up plot of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, I was reminded of my overall general hatred of books hailing from the late 1800s and early 1900s. It’s partly the pre-feminist plots that drive me up a wall (like chick lit today), but also the language barrier and mannerisms that keep me far, far away (again, like chick lit today…). I’ve never read any Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Edith Wharton, Henry James, etc. I can’t relate to any of the characters, and while I do love history, I find the style completely alienating.

I did read books by two out of the three Brontë sisters, though, when I was a teen. I suppose I was drawn in by all that Gothic moodiness. I re-read Jane Eyre for a college paper about 10 years ago (my how time flies), and at that point I noticed what a demented it book it is. Damn, Jane’s decision to stick by that old blind asshole Rochester irks me to no end. The guy fucking locked up his first wife (Bertha) in an attic. Whether Bertha really was insane before being locked up or not (and Jean Rhys has an amazing book, The Wide Sargasso Sea which takes Bertha’s point of view – I highly recommend it to anyone who read Jane Eyre), being shut in an attic would certainly drive anyone certifiably insane. (For more proof on this point, read Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews. It’s a twisted tale about four kids who are banished to an attic in their eeeeevil granny’s house when their dad dies. However, do not – I repeat, do not read any of the sequels, as they are progressively trashier and imbecilic.) On the flippant side of the coin, I also feel for Bertha because her name is Bertha for god’s sake and that is a name that is definitely going to get a girl tormented by other kids when you are young, possibly even driving one insane.

The point is that Jane is a stupid cunt and if Rochester wasn’t completely dependent on her to care for him (yeah, that sounds like a great relationship), he’d probably get tired of her and hide her away so another he can get some fresh meat from another young dumb governess.

On the other hand, there can be some value if these books are read for what they are, which is a product of their times. They serve as nice reminders of why conservatives are flat out dead wrong when they look to the past as a model of the future. (If Bush isn’t that asshole head of the orphanage in Jane, I don’t know what he is.) If everyone understands the past, there might be more resistance to going back to the “good old” days.

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>Thomas Hardy’s book Tess of the d’Urbervilles has to be one of the worst pieces of anti-woman “literature” in the last 100 or so years. Basically:

Tess’s family is poor and her mom thinks they have a distant cousin who is wealthy, so Tess is sent to his estate to ask for help. He helps all right – helps himself to sex with her against her wishes. Of course, this ruins Tess’s reputation and she goes back to her parents surrounded by malicious gossip. When she has a rape baby, it of course dies immediately to punish Tess for being a whore. Then Tess moves to get work on a diary farm. The hot farm guy falls in love with her and vice versa, and the get married. On their wedding night, he confesses that he once fucked some other chick. She then tells him she was raped. He tells her his image of her purity is ruined and he can’t be with her since she is not pure. She pines away from him, then goes back to live with her rapist so that he will support her now widowed mother. Then he admits he lied to her about various shit, and she stabs and kills him. After that, her husband takes her back, but she is arrested for killing the fucking asshole and I think is hanged.

I say that I think she gets hanged because I would never read such a vile piece of trash. However, last night one of my extremely talented college roommates premiered 50 minutes of amazing music and songs from the musical she has written based on the book. (My other extremely talented college roommate is a muralist.) The performances were fantastic and while I am not a huge fan of musicals (the fact that Coed Prison Sluts is my all time favorite musical should indicate my level of taste in these matters), I do think she could eventually wind up with this thing on Broadway.

Still, what the fuck is with the book? Husband and Brother-in-Law got rather annoyed with me as I muttered about how fucked up the storyline is and rolled my eyes dramatically. I think she should modernize the plot a bit first. Little girls should not go around dreaming about being with a judgmental hypocrite fuck for a husband, nor should they be afraid to take action against rapists.

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>When I got the mail yesterday evening, I was surprised to find an envelope from Mother-in-Law (MiL). Whatever could this be? I wondered. Once inside my apartment (mere steps from the mailboxes in our building), I greedily ripped it open. It was a coupon for a FREE pair of cotton undies from the Victoria’s Secret PINK collection (solid colors only; up to $7.50 value), with a cute note from MiL indicating that she felt too old for Victoria’s Secret. (PS – You are not. They actually have decent cotton undies, as demonstrated by Theo and the Giant Stuffed Penis on Thursday, December 22, but thank you for the coupon.) I can choose from bikini, string bikini, thong, or v-string in black, white, or pink. Cool! I so love free underwear!

The first step is to determine what the hell makes PINK collection underwear so special. You’d think maybe the undies are all pink, but a quick check of my favorite online purveyor of underwear revealed that, no, they are not. They also seem to have nothing in common at all other than the slogan “Victoria’s Secret PINK panties inspire panty envy.” As I looked at the pictures of PINK underpants, I did not notice the underwear that I was wearing getting jealous at all. Maybe they inspire panty envy from women who are not wearing underwear at all.

Since there is no way in hell that I am buying a thong or v-string, that leaves me with two choices: bikini or string bikini. I happen to have made the mistake of purchasing string bikini undies from Victoria’s Secret several years ago (see the last picture, December 7, 2006 – Dr. P and I split a 5-for-$20 deal), and there is not much that is sexy about my flab hanging out over the tops and bottoms of the string as it cuts into my fat hips. (Trust me, Theo looks way better.) That leaves me with a new pair of pink bikini undies! Very exciting stuff. Thanks MiL!!!

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>So it’s Flag Day today. Whoop-de-doo. Does anyone except the Fraunces Tavern Museum celebrate this? I wrote about the Tavern a while back(November 22, 2005) as part of my short-lived “Museum Mondays” series. A quick recap, in honor of Flag Day:

The museum is two stories and is operated by the New York State chapter of the Sons of the Revolution. It is a highly amusing mix of reproductions, photographs of historic statues and plaques, and tschotchkes spread over two floors. The money shot of shrines, though, is the one dedicated to George Washington. There is a fragment of George Washington’s coffin in a tin case and a chunk of George Washington’s pew from St. Paul’s Church. If you have ever wondered what the original GW looked like under his powdered wig, here’s your answer: a locket of George Washington’s hair is encased in a circular glass frame. (Who knew it was reddish brown?) There is also a fragment of George’s tooth encased in a locket, under a magnifying the glass. The tooth came from George’s denture. I’ll warn you that it is a little on the decayed side and leave it at that.

Finally, in what may be the most pointless museum display ever, there is a shrine to Flag Day amongst all the historical ephemera. A glass case is filled with miniature American flags and pictures of the Flag Day Parade on June 14, 2001. Long live Flag Day!

Out of curiosity, when you read the news, how many of you also have an urge to celebrate Flag Day and “the spread of democracy” in Iraq by burning the flag and pissing off conservatives?

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>This picture caught my eye in last Tuesday’s NY Times:You are looking at a tumor with a fucking human tooth. The article is all about tumors that grow teeth, hair, and bones. A choice excerpt:

A tumor’s encroachment is always terrifying, but teratomas, literally “monster tumors,” exert a macabre hold on the imagination because they contain human elements remixed with Frankensteinian logic. It is not unusual for a teratoma to contain patches of hair, errant wedges of cartilage and even fully formed teeth… Teratomas’ most fascinating quality, Dr. Skorecki said, is their capacity to generate a smorgasbord of human tissue varieties, including bones, skin and ligaments… the teratomas then degenerate… into hodgepodges of hair, fingernails and teeth.

The good news is that we might one day be able to use them to treat diseases like alzheimers, according to the article. The bad news is that it entails working with totally creepy tumors.

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