The Killers are the new Cure. Yeah I just said it.

This might officially get the title of Best/Funniest/Most Tragic News Story Ever.

In North Korea, rabbits are a delicacy. Giant Rabbits, as one may deduce then, are a super delicacy. So Kim Jong-il orders 12 giant rabbits from a German breeder (of course it would be a German idea to breed giant fucking rabbits) under the guise of establishing a breeding program in North Korea and feeding rabbits to his starving population. Jong-il acquires said bunnies and begins feeding them two pounds of food a day, twice as much as the government distributes to starving citizens. THEN Jong-il has a birthday party and cooks all 12 giant rabbits as part of his birthday feast, leaving none to procreate. Perhaps the best part of this new development is that the Times story is entitled "Kim Jong-il Ate My Rabbits For His Birthday."

I really wanted AccordionConnection's take on this, but unfortunately they require video material and there is no film documentation to be found of the rabbit-gorging birthday party. So to cheat I drew Gaby a rendition of how I imagined the birthday feast, and she'll pretend it's a video and blog about it.

Thanks to Liz for forwarding such a life-altering story!

Again, NYT's Photo, Again, So Much Going On

McCain is running for President. McCain is not going to make it past the 1 mile marker. Regardless of this not-so-exciting breaking news, why does every single person in this photo, and I MEAN every single person, look like they're coming from just being Botox-ed? McCain's wife looks like an orange, an orange who can't move its eyebrows. Everyone looks totally stretched, and not in a calm, centered yogi way. McCain and that dude in the tan jacket are also making the exact same I-can't-move-my-mouth-fully facial expression which is pretty damn eery.
I usually don't care for factitious Botox accusations in my daily breakfast of poopy political Hodge Podge (ew), but they did it to Hilary, they did it to Kerry, so I figure they asked for it.

Bonus fact: 58 percent of Americans say they would be unlikely to vote for a 72 year old!*

Bonus Bonus fact: A bunch young, nubile, sexy things are getting the 'tox! Perfect Ratio is getting old! She's going to be 25 soon. Should she get the 'tox? Or should she resign herself to her old, saggy, wrinkly quarter life appearance and call herself "Vastly Imperfect Ratio", or "Two Wrinkle Ratio", or even the more ribald "Waiting For Breasts to Drop to Grandma's Breast Ratio"? Important decisions she'll think about while relishing the ability of her eyebrows to move into "thinking expression."

*Harper's May 2007

Yeltsin, The NYT's Farewell Photo

There's just so much going on in this photo: Yeltsin's widow crying. The strange bald Russian whose character in my mind seems to shift back and forth between bad mafioso wishing harm and supportive, gentle giant. Then there's the shoulder of a man in uniform present in the background, and at first glance, I could have sworn that his badge was the face of a shawled woman bawling. Finally, the woman or man blurred in the background wearing a pink shirt. Who wears pink to funerals? Who wears pink in Russia anymore? I mean....
Under normal circumstances I would also add some insinuations of pictorial farts (specifically to the bald man--perhaps that's why he looks so questionable?), but, c'mon, this is a funeral.

Overheard in MN

From a friend, for the blog:

"To add some laughs to your day....

I was just at the grocery store to pick up some salmon to make for dinner this week. I was walking away from the seafood counter and in the next aisle when one of the young, good-looking sample guys from the meat department comes up from behind me and goes, "I noticed you shopping in the meat department and wanted to ask you if you'd like to come back and sample some of my sausages?"

Trying to prevent myself from bursting out laughing, I politely responded, "Well, I don't eat red meat, but thanks for the offer," and carried on my merry way."

Resemblance, No?

The season of amusement is upon us. Crying kids, sticky fingers, gross urine-tainted water splashing into your gape-grinned mouth as you plummet down a hill in a coated plastic "log" boat. Who among us doesn't crave such refreshment? You? Really? You don't like amusement parks? ("Um, hello is this the FBI? Yes, yes, I want to report suspicious un-American sentiments...")

For Americans and foreigners alike there is a funnel cake of universal fun waiting to be barfed up at the good ole standby Disney World. You can get married at the Fairy Tale Castle (even you gays are now allowed with a ceremony administered by Captain Hook and Mr. Smee). You can take pictures with child molesters in full Mickey Mouse drag. You can die on the Mission: Space ride. You can do it all! You can have a ball! (Though based on personal experience, Perfect Ratio suggests bypassing the Clam Chowder soup served by the sweaty, serpeant-tattooed ex-con at the Liberty Tree Inn)

I'm trying to get you all excited about this rat-faced symbol of your American heritage, because, as you may have heard before: The Brits are coming! The Brits are coming! The Brits are coming! Yes, those pesky English speakers across the sea who are always trying to steal our good ideas and pass them off as original ("Mmmm yes, Charles I think it would be simply lovely to go to war in Iraq. Please pass the biscuits ") are starting their own amusement park: Dickens World. I mean Jesus America Christ can they not come up with their OWN initials and syllabic emphasis?

But sweet, poorly-read Americans-- before you get lured out of country on Great Expectations of fancy waistcoats and greedy old men, let me impart a few tales of this Dickens character. He is no friendly cute mouse nor an anti-semitic sweetheart with a love of the animated. No, friends he was a writer. A writer of terrible plots which spurned love, orphaned children, and depicted place settings that are probably wholly responsible for today's global warming. This Dickens World will be a dark, forsaken place:

"Purists don't even appear that perturbed by a soft play area called Fagin's Den. That's the same Fagin who ran a petty-theft sweatshop and beat children with a toasting fork - not an obvious person to name a creche after. "There's something very attractive about Fagin and about the atmosphere that he creates for children in his employ," says Leon Litvack, trustee of the Dickens Museum and professor at Queens University Belfast. "There is a sinister motive but Dickens treats that with humour. Oliver's life there is better than it was in the workhouse."

Parents, they will kill you, orphan your children British-style, then use their blood to run the rides. Buy American.

Gabby passed THIS on-- it's better than sex.

Who You Gonna Call? Fetus Blasters!

Yesterday sucked. Not only because as Simone pointed out during the Pro-Choice rally in Union Square, the sky was sporting the Ghostbusters apocalypse-impending charcoal cloud cover, but more so because of the reason we were standing there: The Supreme Court decision to uphold the ban on the misnomered partial birth (i.e. after 12 weeks)abortion.

In 2003 when those men pictured above, whom, may it obviously be pointed out will never give birth to anything but an enormous ass baby, were gleefully watching Bush sign the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, I threw up a little in my pants. I remember this picture being circulated through email when I was still in college as a blatant symbol of smirking suits coercively legislating their way into the vaginas of the country. I remember discussing it in Sociology. I remember thinking it was a fucking scary possibility, but still, in the back of my mind, it was more of an object of academic masturbation rather than a real prospect.

The fact that the ban doesn't make sense has been ignored by the Court entirely-- the decision makes it a federal felony for the fetus to be removed from a woman's body "in an intact condition", so doctors will be forced to perform a far more dangerous medical procedure on women with ectopic pregnancies or other inviable birth conditions: dismembering the fetus before it passes the cervix. Kennedy stated in his opinion that this act "expresses respect for the dignity of human life.” I don't believe that a fetus should be considered a person, but let's say I did, how does BLASTING the fetal body to bits before removing it lend more dignity to human life? The irrationality of such an argument makes it abundantly clear, if for some reason you were still unsure, that the ultimate goal of this Act is to erode women's rights in general.

And what a better way to start scraping off the protective paint than to essentially gut the health exception clause:

Justice Kennedy, in addressing the need for the health exception, said on Wednesday that it was acceptable for Congress not to include one because there was “medical uncertainty” over whether the banned procedure was ever necessary for the sake of a woman’s health. He said that pregnant women or their doctors could assert an individual need for a health exception by going to court to challenge the law as it applied to them.

If you are in possession of a vagina the law, for all intents and purposes, was just made more important than your health yesterday. Stay tuned for the Court ruling amending tax law: failure to pay taxes on time can be punished with a hand-delivered-by-your-state-representative case of vaginal herpes!

Postmodern Fat-ism

It has consumed and ravished us all week long, now watch as it's our turn to retaliate. This was originally going to be a Video Documentary, but alas our minds were on Cheesecake, not camera batteries. You'll just have to imagine all the funny shit that came out of our mouths, and that which went in.

Highlight #1

"Maroon Five is like beans on toast, like limp dick sex, like biscuits, like farting during a blowjob."

The Week in Moments

1.) My Mom blurting out that Sedentary Lifestyle would be a good name for a band, with the specification that all members were balding, chubby males.

2.)Having my gyno insinuate that somehow my vagina is not "New York-ish"

3.)Fully convincing my grandma that I wrote, produced, and starred in a one woman show called "Classico Chicken" off-Broadway that involves a hen who falls in love with a young farm boy, and at the end, departs into space in a chicken-created space shuttle wearing a diaper.

4.)Stepping on the scale and realizing I lost ten pounds since I last weighed myself, probably all from fasting for the Cheesecake Factory this week, and knowing that I'm going to gain it all back tonight!

I should have posted it here first

but......

See? Classic Dickwad Behavior

Teen chick on cell: Yeah, he's a total dickwad. But I've got to go -- I'm going to break up with him right now.
Boy walking with her: Me? Fuck you, bitch.

--23rd & 6th

Overheard by: Ren

via Overheard in New York, Apr 8, 2007

I laughed so hard when this happened that I spilled coffee all over myself.

The Fast Before The Feast.

It's the perfect time to fast-- it's in sync with the Christian calendar right now, and there's an even larger goal at hand for which I have a ZipCar rented, a car CD mixed, and the excitement of a boy about to get his first BJ: The Cheesecake Factory next weekend.

For those naysayers who may be shaking their heads, thinking "what silly cows these girls are to rent a car for the sole purpose of consuming massive-portioned, responsible-for-obesity-in-America, chain restaurant food!" I recite to you, in an unwavering voice, the following haiku:

Cheesecake Factory
It is not Applebee's duh
Cheesecake Factory

I would also gesture to the salivation-inducing photos in the corner. Have you ever had a Grande Factory Burrito?
Yeah, I didn't think so. Have you ever finished the Grande Factory Burrito? Yeah, I didn't think you could do that either.

Anyhow, I'm about to embark on a diet which consists of only healthy things in moderation, which to many people is simply their daily eating regimen, but to me it's like the Pillsbury Dough Boy embarking on Atkins. I will also go to the gym and partake in sex daily to burn extra calories DESPITE how good abstinence feels (see post below). Insane!

I would like to point out, especially to Yellow Rape who will give me a lot of flack on this mission, that God is behind me. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me (when God is in my stomach):

QUESTION:

Why do we fast, and from what do we fast, before Pascha?


ANSWER:

We fast before the Feast of Feasts [The Cheesecake Factory], the Resurrection of Christ [our chubby childhood], to prepare ourselves for the celebration of Our Lord's eternal victory over sin, corruption, and death [dessert], and in anticipation of our own resurrection[night on the toilet]. Hence, Great Lent is a time of preparation, during which we focus on and anticipate the resurrection of Our Savior by fasting, prayer, and almsgiving[Cheesecake donations may be sent through PayPal].

When we fast, we "shift our focus" from ourselves to God and others, spending less time worrying about what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat [to the anticipation of eating], and so on in order to use our time in increased prayer and caring for the poor [giving them my Oreos]. We learn through fasting that we indeed can gain control over those things that we too often allow to control us [Cheesecake] -- and for many people, food is a controlling factor. We live in the only society in which an entire TV network is devoted to food! While fasting from food, however, we are also challenged to fast from sin [omitted from diet], from gossip [omitted from diet], from jealousy[omitted from diet], from anger[omitted from diet], and from those other things which, while well within our control, we all too often allow to control us [drug allowance still under debate for this week in fear that it may lead to cookie eating].

Further, just as we would refrain from eating a lot before going to an expensive restaurant for dinner -- if we "ruin our appetite" we will hardly enjoy our dinner -- so too we fast before Holy Pascha in order to more fully feast and celebrate on the Feast itself.[omg, right on Christian website!]

Abstinence Feels Good.

Yeah, not having a dick in me feels JUST LIKE skateboarding.

A week in which the Supreme Court scolds Bush is a good week, and a day during which Joe Francis gets punched is an excellent day. Maybe the world is coming to its senses after all!

Today as Reese and I were leaving Key Foods in Park Slope--

Reese: "It's weird how we live so close to Maggie Gyllenhaal, but we've never seen her, isn't it?"

Me: "Yeah, it is totes weird how we never see any celebrities. Park Slope is where anorexic actresses come when they need to get fat and have babies."

Not two seconds after those words departed from my lips, Heath Fuckin Ledger strolls past us in all his celebrity glory. Not kidding. He was pretty beautiful, though if I were Williams I would snip the greasy ponytail.

Feeling pretty assured of my power to dictate reality, on the next block I tried "Isn't it weird how I haven't gotten laid lately?"

Sure enough, Ledger fell down from the heavens with a gigantic boner.