What is this, 1999?

The obvious choice for today. If you’re me.

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 10:26:48 -0800

The obvious choice for today. If you’re me.

One teachers approach to preventing gender bullying in a classroom

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:06:51 -0800

“It’s Okay to be Neither,” By Melissa Bollow Tempel

Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art room, I said: “Allie, I’m not playing. It’s time for art. The rule is no hoods or hats in school.”

She looked up with tears in her eyes and I realized there was something wrong. Her classmates went into the art room and we moved to the art storage area so her classmates wouldn’t hear our conversation. I softened my tone and asked her if she’d like to tell me what was wrong.

“My ponytail,” she cried.

“Can I see?” I asked.

She nodded and pulled down her hood. Allie’s braids had come undone overnight and there hadn’t been time to redo them in the morning, so they had to be put back in a ponytail. It was high up on the back of her head like those of many girls in our class, but I could see that to Allie it just felt wrong. With Allie’s permission, I took the elastic out and re-braided her hair so it could hang down.

“How’s that?” I asked.

She smiled. “Good,” she said and skipped off to join her friends in art.

‘Why Do You Look Like a Boy?’

Read More

Thank you, Ms. Melissa.

(via @seldo)

ernie: Over the phone tonight, my boyfriend casually mentioned...

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:17:31 -0800

ernie:

Over the phone tonight, my boyfriend casually mentioned that he had a full-sized replica of a carousel cat sitting in storage, something his parents got as a gift when they owned a magazine about pets, and would like to bring it into our apartment. The carousel cat has a fish in its mouth. The cat comes with its own carousel pole, as you can plainly see in the photo.

I’m going to live with a man who has a carousel cat.

I mean, LOOK AT THOSE FUCKING EYES. Maybe it’s the photo, but no matter where I stand in the room it looks like those yellow eyes are staring at me. I close my eyes and try to imagine where the cat would go. In the bathroom? Not really. Across from the sofas so we could engage in evening-long staring contests? Nope.

“Ernie,” the cat would stare at me as I wake up in the middle of the night to grab a glass of water. “Join me to the dark side, where we will conquer the underworld together. Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you want some… FISH?”

“Not now, Merry-go-round cat,” I would reply back, walking past him and turning off the lights, two yellow saucers glowing in the dark for the rest of the night.

I shake off my overactive imagination. “Babe, I’m not sure if this cat will go with any of the other stuff we have,” I tell my boyfriend over the telephone.

“We could work around that,” he says in a deadpan voice. “We could always just make our living room circus-themed.”

He does have a point; people could always use the cat as extra seating space.

Everything will be okay. Provided that circus carousel cat doesn’t eat my soul.

Guess who has two thumbs, just stuck a stuffed fish in his mouth, and crept up behind Ernie while making the expression above?

"Melancholy shouldn’t be confused with depression. Melancholy is an active state. When we’re..."

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 12:35:23 -0800

“Melancholy shouldn’t be confused with depression. Melancholy is an active state. When we’re melancholic, we feel uneasy with the way things are, the status quo, the conventions of our society. We yearn for a deeper, richer relationship with the world. And in that yearning, we’re forced to explore the potential within ourselves – a potential we might not have explored if we were simply content. We come up with new ways of seeing the world and new ways of being in the world. Melancholy and creativity go together.”

- Alexander Stutterheim, post on Melancholy & Creativity (via jonathanmoore)

Space means future-couture capes and blasé expressions from...

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:04:34 -0800

Space means future-couture capes and blasé expressions from oxygen deprivation. Can’t breathe, so bored.

Been thinking about aliens this week. Don’t ask why.

So this just happened outside. Can this happen more often?

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 22:23:00 -0800

So this just happened outside. Can this happen more often?

Moth Macabre, “All Great Architects Are Dead” More...

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 22:18:38 -0800

Moth Macabre, “All Great Architects Are Dead”

More revisiting the 90s. I didn’t think about it then, but it weirds me out now that they all basically have the same haircut.

me3dia: laughingsquid: Helveticards, Minimalist Typographic...

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:59:45 -0800

me3dia:

laughingsquid:

Helveticards, Minimalist Typographic Playing Cards

Using Helvetica does not render something minimalist. Playing cards are already minimalist — they contain the bare minimum of design elements to communicate information. Not to mention, this design mostly discards the dual orientation of the traditional design.

Andrew’s got a point.

Run On, “Xmas Trip” Dug up an old Matador promo dvd...

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 08:54:49 -0700

Run On, “Xmas Trip”

Dug up an old Matador promo dvd this week and was reminded of this.

Lene Lovich on Top of the Pops, “Lucky Number”

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:40:42 -0700

Lene Lovich on Top of the Pops, “Lucky Number”

superamit: Two weeks ago I got a call from my doctor, who I’d...

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:57:52 -0700

superamit:

Two weeks ago I got a call from my doctor, who I’d gone to see the day before because I’d been feeling worn out and was losing weight, and wasn’t sure why.

He was brief: “Amit, you’ve got Acute Leukemia. You need to enter treatment right away.”

I was terrified. I packed a backpack full of clothes, went to the hospital as he’d instructed, and had transfusions through the night to allow me to take a flight home at 7am the next day. I Googled acute leukemia as I lay in my hospital bed, learning that if it hadn’t been caught, I’d have died within weeks.

—

I have a couple more months of chemo to go, then the next step is a bone marrow transplant. As Jay and Tony describe below, minorities are severely underrepresented in the bone marrow pool, and I need help.

A few ways to help:

If you’re South Asian, get a free test by mail. You rub your cheeks with a cotton swab and mail it back. It’s easy.

If you’re in NYC, you can go to this event my friends are putting on.

If you know any South Asians (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, or Sri Lanka), please point ‘em to the links above. Thank you.

jayparkinsonmd:

My friend Amit Gupta founded my favorite photography site Photojojo. A few weeks ago, he was diagnosed with leukemia. Amit is one of the nicest, most genuine, most creative people you could ever meet. Prior to founding the awesome Photojojo, he also co-founded Jelly in 2006 in NYC, a coworking community, that’s now spread to 60 cities across the world and helped spark the coworking revolution. It looks like Amit will need a bone marrow transplant quite soon. We can help him with that.

tony b:

Unlike blood transfusions, finding a genetic match for bone marrow that his body will accept is no easy task. The national bone marrow registry has 9.5 million records on file, yet the chances of someone from South Asian descent of finding a match are only 1 in 20,000.

This is where we come in. We’re going to destroy those odds.

How? By finding and registering as many people of South Asian descent as we possibly can.

Tests are easy– a simple swab of the cheek. If you’re a match, the donation involves an outpatient procedure. It’s not fun, but it’s not dangerous either. And doing it could save a life.

We are encouraging anyone of South Asian descent to take a test to see if you’re a match.

You can get a free test by mail, or, if you’re in New York, you can join us Friday, October 14th for a special party to rally support.

We’ll have test kits on hand at the party, as well as music, booze, and maybe even a photo booth. It will, for the first time, combine a House 2.0-style party with a New Work City-style party, and if you’ve ever been to either, you know they are always something special.

Please spread the word and please do everything you can to help Amit beat leukemia. He’s a superstar.

Much thanks to Tony and pals for organizing this event, and EVERYONE who’s been tweeting and reblogging.

Please help get the word out any way you can. My life quite literally depends on it.

Amit’s a colleague of mine, and a genuinely nice person. Help out if you can.

"I was at the debate, in the audience on the right hand side about halfway back. The person who booed..."

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:03:00 -0700

“I was at the debate, in the audience on the right hand side about halfway back. The person who booed was just a few rows in front of us. The booing got an immediate and angry reaction from nearly everyone sitting around him, who hissed and shushed at him. Lots of loud gasps, ‘Shhhh!’ ‘No!’ ‘Shut up, you idiot!’ etc.”

- Blogger Sarah Rumpf • Discussing what actually happened during last night’s debate, during the infamous Rick Santorum/gay soldier question. We’d like to proudly note that our writer Chris managed to get this right the first time, rather than claiming the entire crowd was booing. Rumpf explains how the spare booing managed to echo through the room so effectively, and then denounces it. “There may be different opinions among Republicans about gays in the military,” she says, “but booing a soldier is not acceptable, and all but one or two people in a crowd of thousands knew that.” (thanks Dave Weigel) source

(Reblogging this because I saw the video in question, and it did seem like it was only a couple guys booing. I would like to see the different sides be smarter about going after each other, and not make mountains out of a couple people’s lack of respect.)

Castro Theatre details

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 17:03:01 -0700

Castro Theatre details

seldo: Look, this is the Internet. If I didn’t post cute puppy...

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 01:14:15 -0700

seldo:

Look, this is the Internet. If I didn’t post cute puppy pictures sometimes, I’d be doing it wrong.

Dead of cute.

seldo: This is the clearest explanation of this I have ever...

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:35:05 -0700

seldo:

This is the clearest explanation of this I have ever seen (although the spelling error bugs me).

I was looking for the spelling error, “femenine,” okay I see. Anyway, yes. I’m sure not every single person will see themselves here, but hopefully this clarifies how much we can differ and how things can and can’t be so clear cut.

And for all you straight guys who like to joke, “I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body,” that’s actually not a joke. That happens. (It’s even been discussed on Donahue.)