The downside of shopping at H&M is that all the other young, happenin' twentysomethings in New York shop there too, and sooner or later you're bound to run into someone on the street or in your building who is wearing the exact same dress that you picked up and went "this would look totally hot on me" at. At least we weren't wearing it on the same

Dear Internet!

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love you for Laffing Sal, sideshow freaks, Laff in the Dark, carousels of all sorts, body horror, TVTropes, the Little Girl Giant, automata, DoomBuggies.Com, Waverly Hills Sanatorium, the Elephant Man, the Rockafire Explosion, postmortem photography, ghosts, Jaquet-Droz's Musician and ( Read more... )

Now that I'm turning 25 I've started to take a little more interest in style (when I'm not thinking about Batman) so I decided to take my dear friend Rose up on her suggestion of going to a makeup counter and asking for a lesson in basic makeup application ( Read more... )

me: "Oh god, I had this horrible nightmare that your sister died in a freak accident when she fell through the floor like Bill Cosby in Ghost Dad and got trapped there and suffocated and I was all oh god what about her family and I didn't want to believe it had happened and I kept asking you to tell me it wasn't true and then I woke up and just lay ( Read more... )

Dear slightly vacant-eyed young woman in the "Every Girl Needs A Vampire" shirt,

No.

Am I the lone voice of reason who remembers that Buffy episode where all the impressionable kids are going "ooh, vampires, so mysterious and cool and sexy!" and invite them all to their club and then THEY ALMOST GET KILLED? Vampires are charming and sexy for the ( Read more... )

me: *blah blah blah menstruation* Just be glad you're a boy.
him: *grumble* Yeah, right. We don't get interesting shoes, and we don't live as long.

A big colorful sign near the elevator at work announces an employee-wide contest! I look closer, and... it's a diet contest. Based on a new diet book. Corporate-sponsored fat-shaming go!

Accosted by HRC canvassers on the street, I'm reminded that I don't do enough for gay rights. How can I do more?

A book I'm working on this morning was found to contain this paragraph:

The secret turned out to be a dash of Old Bay seasoning and the women settled around the kitchen table with their coffee talking about recipes, diets tried and untried, husbands, and kids. The things women talk about.Really ( Read more... )

Will and I sat for Nathan last night while Myra and Jordan went out to a show. Nathan was in an extraordinarily good mood and seemed delighted to play with his uncle and find out that banging spoons together made noise. I marveled at his Thomas the Tank Engine cell phone, on which I could apparently call Sir Topham Hatt. Kids these days ( Read more... )

Some erotica novel I was editing has a proposed layout attached that includes a section for discussion questions. Discussion questions. I'm trying to imagine a roomful of book club biddies trying to make some meaningful discussion out of Regency-era porn. I'm guessing the list goes "1) Was it good for you?"