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16 Oct 16:21

The Tooth

by Adam
I went to Jason's party because I had nothing better to do, realizing I wouldn't know anybody and would probably end up standing alone in his backyard nursing a beer, wishing I was playing videogames instead. House parties in Portland are almost always terrible but I figured being bored and annoyed while surrounded by people was better than being bored and annoyed while sitting on my couch in the dark.

 In a pleasant turn of events I found myself engaged in conversation with a girl named Eve. I'm sure it's obvious how the conversation started.

"Oh, your name is Adam? My name is Eve!"

"What a hilarious coincidence! Let's talk about lots of things now."

At some point I made her laugh, though I don't recall the joke. What I do remember is that she guffawed suddenly and loudly, and it caused her tooth to shoot out of her mouth. I'll explain this further in a moment, but for now let me repeat what I just said, because it deserves to be emphasized. She laughed hard enough to propel her tooth out of her skull.


 tooth_pop 

She seemed unfazed and bent over to pick up her tooth. Noticing my alarm, she explained to me that the tooth had actually popped out last year, and rather than get it replaced with a fake one, she'd simply inserted it back into place. "It's always sort of wobbly now," she explained, "but it stays put most of the time. It's fun to be able to remove it whenever I want." 

 She blew the dirt off her tooth and nonchalantly mashed it back into its gumhole.

tooth_squish 

I asked Eve how she'd lost the tooth, and she recounted how she'd taken a basketball to the face in the park. The tooth had been loose prior to the accident, so she wasn't altogether surprised when it flew out of her mouth.

tooth_basketballtooth_whitney 

I was skeptical as to how a basketball could travel with enough force to knock out somebody's tooth, but I decided not to grill her about it. I'm no stranger to getting smacked in the face with balls myself (shut up, you know what I mean). As a teenager I wore glasses exclusively, and once during gym class I was struck in the face with a dodgeball. The impact was severe enough to break my glasses into three separate pieces.

tooth_dodge 

Eve and I talked for about a half hour after that, my eyes constantly darting to her one loose tooth, knowing it could launch itself free of her body at any time without warning. Eventually she and I parted ways when we each noticed other people we knew. I didn't see her again for a couple hours. 

 A little before 1 AM she appeared again, visibly sloshed. She stumbled up to me, holding her tooth up to my face.

tooth_holdon 

And with that, she disappeared into the house, entrusting me with her tiny bit of precious enamel. I suppose it was responsible of her in a way, like giving your car keys to a designated driver. Picking your tooth out of a pile of vomit can't be a pleasant experience. 

 An hour passed with no sign of Eve. The party began to clear out and I was itching to leave myself. I scanned the backyard, then did a quick patrol of the house looking for her, but she was nowhere to be found. I meandered through the dwindling crowd of stragglers, asking if any of them knew Eve's whereabouts.

tooth_asking  

Eve had clearly left the party without her tooth. I asked Jason, the party's host, if I could leave the tooth with him in case the girl came back to claim it. 

 "You may absolutely not leave that nasty thing in my house," Jason said. "Take it with you." 

 I didn't know what to do. It was not my responsibility to look after a drunk girl's lost tooth. I considered my options. Should I take it with me and post a listing on Craigslist the next day? There's no M4TF (Male For Toothless Female) listing. I couldn't embark on some Cinderella-style quest to find her, looking for a mouth to fit the tooth. That would most certainly result in failure.

tooth_grannytooth_carnytooth_hockey 

Left with no alternative, I opted to pocket the tooth and head home. I had to trust that if Eve needed her tooth, she'd find me. The tooth sat on my book case for several days, and I started to become unnerved by it. Nobody at the party had known who Eve was, and I began to suspect that maybe she never existed at all. Perhaps she was a demon succubus whose sole purpose was to plant a cursed tooth on some unsuspecting male. Maybe the tooth was some sort of cursed totem with the power to summon great monstrosities from the abyss.

tooth_cthulhu

Currently, the tooth still rests on my book case, abandoned and possibly harnessing sinister energy. I still don't know what I should to do with it, so in closing, I offer this final plea: 

 Eve, 

 I have your tooth. If you happen to read this, please let me know, because I'd rather not have bits of your skull lingering around my apartment. If I haven't heard from you in a couple weeks, that tooth is fair game, and I'm getting it plated in silver and strung from a chain. If it turns out to have mystical powers, I'm selling that shit on eBay. 

 Regards, Adam


01 May 23:50

The Case Against Grades

by Michael Thomsen
Hamstahs

I haven't fully formed an opinion on this... maybe I'd have a stronger feeling if I had/knew kids in school currently. Seems like a good case, though.

There is always something or someone to blame in our struggle for education reform. Sometimes it’s the “bad teachers” who get the blame. Other times it's standardized testing, insufficient funding, or slow-moving bureaucracy. I blame grades.



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01 May 23:20

A Daddy’s Letter to His Little Girl (About Her Future Husband)

by Kelly Flanagan

Untitled-Father-and-Daughter

After stumbling across destructive advice, licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Kelly Flanagan writes a letter to his daughter about what really matters in a relationship.

Dear Cutie-Pie,

Recently, your mother and I were searching for an answer on Google. Halfway through entering the question, Google returned a list of the most popular searches in the world. Perched at the top of the list was “How to keep him interested.”

It startled me. I scanned several of the countless articles about how to be sexy and sexual, when to bring him a beer versus a sandwich, and the ways to make him feel smart and superior.

And I got angry.

Little One, it is not, has never been, and never will be your job to “keep him interested.”

Little One, your only task is to know deeply in your soul—in that unshakeable place that isn’t rattled by rejection and loss and ego—that you are worthy of interest. (If you can remember that everyone else is worthy of interest also, the battle of your life will be mostly won. But that is a letter for another day.)

If you can trust your worth in this way, you will be attractive in the most important sense of the word: you will attract a boy who is both capable of interest and who wants to spend his one life investing all of his interest in you.

Little One, I want to tell you about the boy who doesn’t need to be kept interested, because he knows you are interesting:

I don’t care if he puts his elbows on the dinner table—as long as he puts his eyes on the way your nose scrunches when you smile. And then can’t stop looking.

I don’t care if he can’t play a bit of golf with me—as long as he can play with the children you give him and revel in all the glorious and frustrating ways they are just like you.

I don’t care if he doesn’t follow his wallet—as long as he follows his heart and it always leads him back to you.

I don’t care if he is strong—as long as he gives you the space to exercise the strength that is in your heart.

I couldn’t care less how he votes—as long as he wakes up every morning and daily elects you to a place of honor in your home and a place of reverence in his heart.

I don’t care about the color of his skin—as long as he paints the canvas of your lives with brushstrokes of patience, and sacrifice, and vulnerability, and tenderness.

I don’t care if he was raised in this religion or that religion or no religion—as long as he was raised to value the sacred and to know every moment of life, and every moment of life with you, is deeply sacred.

In the end, Little One, if you stumble across a man like that and he and I have nothing else in common, we will have the most important thing in common:

You.

Because in the end, Little One, the only thing you should have to do to “keep him interested” is to be you.

Your eternally interested guy,

Daddy

♦◊♦

This post is, of course, dedicated to my daughter, my Cutie-Pie. But I also want to dedicate it beyond her.

I wrote it for my wife, who has courageously held on to her sense of worth and has always held me accountable to being that kind of “boy.”

I wrote it for every grown woman I have met inside and outside of my therapy office—the women who have never known this voice of a Daddy.

And I wrote it for the generation of boys-becoming-men who need to be reminded of what is really important—my little girl finding a loving, lifelong companion is dependent upon at least one of you figuring this out. I’m praying for you.

 

This post was originally published here.

Image credit: patrick_bird via Compfight cc

Premium Membership, The Good Men Project

25 Apr 19:06

How my 6 year old sister handles stress...

Hamstahs

"Stop crying or I'll give you a reason to cry" is my favorite from childhood.

23 Apr 23:26

The Real Problem With That Controversial, Sexy Video Game Sorceress [UPDATE]

by Jason Schreier

Two weeks ago, I wrote an article that criticized one of the characters in the upcoming game Dragon's Crown. Today, the man behind that character has responded to that article.

Read more...

    


23 Apr 23:21

Superheroes Designed By Little Girls Are Fantastic

by Patricia Hernandez

First there was Superheroes are for girls, too!, a website which showcased little girls who love superheroes. Now there's also Little Girls Are Better At Designing Superheroes Than You, a website which illustrates photographs of superhero-loving little girls. They're heartening pictures.

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23 Apr 23:15

Blondie, Please Read This Letter From Your Dad

by raisingmyrainbow
I had started writing a post for this week when I saw an email in my inbox that was much more important.  The email was from a father who wanted me to do him a favor.  You see, he knows … Continue reading →
22 Apr 17:55

Photo

Hamstahs

This is me pretty much every single morning ever.



19 Apr 21:13

4 Video Games That Help You Understand And Deal With Your Depression

by Phil Owen

The web has been abuzz about games with a focus on depression this year, Depression Quest in particular catching everyone's eye. But this very small subcategory of free games goes beyond just that title, and we can take in a true variety of experiences when exploring this space.

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18 Apr 17:56

(via cineraria:YouTube)

15 Apr 19:35

Oh, Bummer, Man.

by pyrit

The #1 reason hippies don’t go camping nowadays is the fear of going into the woods and finding an 18′ tall hermit crab lurking beside their campsite.

8635157893_7786512bd5_b
Sender-Inner Abi M. shares, “In a break from the normal underwater photograph, Jason Isley has added miniature figurines to create cute scenes with underwater critters.” Very cool! Like wow!


Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Crawlies, Unusual Animals
09 Apr 21:42

The Politics of Prude

by Emily Bazelon

Sex, teenagers, and the morning-after pill. It’s a combination that has scared two presidential administrations out of allowing regular over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraceptive Plan B, despite plenty of evidence showing that it’s safe and effective, and that selling it on drugstore shelves won’t endanger teenage girls. Last week, a federal judge put an end to a decade of stonewalling over Plan B sales. In particular, Judge Edward B. Korman, a Reagan appointee, lit into the decision of Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to block the Food and Drug Administration from granting over-the-counter access. His biting ruling exposes the hypocrisy of the Obama administration—its sacrifice of science to political expediency. The whole sorry story stands as a lesson in how federal officials should not make decisions.



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09 Apr 21:40

Animal Personalities

by Lee Alan Dugatkin

Rob is a risk taker—the kind of guy who climbs mountains just because they are there. And he’ll be the first to tell you that he does it for the rush. Kristin is more reserved, but don’t ask her about that, because she’s not a talker. Adrian is always happy; Steve takes offense when none is intended. They all have different personalities.



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09 Apr 18:47

Why the mantis shrimp is my new favorite animal

by Matthew Inman
Hamstahs

Learning with The Oatmeal!

Why the mantis shrimp is my new favorite animal

A comic about a glorious undersea creature.

View
09 Apr 18:43

The Stories of Poop Hidden in NASA's Apollo 10 Mission Transcripts

by Jamie Condliffe

The Stories of Poop Hidden in NASA's Apollo 10 Mission TranscriptsDuring NASA's Apollo 10 moon mission in 1969, not quite everything went to plan. But we're not talking Apollo 13-style disasters here—instead, we're talking about some toilet-based issues.

Clearly the astronauts in question—Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young and Eugene A. Cernan—hadn't quite gotten to grips with how to go to the toilet in space, as these NASA transcripts from the mission reveal. Tales of floating turds, sticky poop and inventive use of napkins is rather... eye opening.

You can read the full mission transcripts here. Or just spend the next few minutes inventing jokes about encounters of the turd kind. Your call. [Reddit via Laughing Squid]

The Stories of Poop Hidden in NASA's Apollo 10 Mission Transcripts

06 Apr 18:59

Sonny

by noreply@blogger.com (Bill)
There will be no bargain.  I will not to give up my favorite decoration.  I like Captain Solo where he is.
Thanks, Ali!

Sonny is available for adoption at Hop Along Hollow!
05 Apr 00:03

25 Things That Make Me So Happy I Want To Pee My Pants

by Julieanne

Since one of our friends here at xoJane is having a Bad Week, I'm starting the list anew, and hoping you all will deign to contribute.

read more

04 Apr 23:31

"Say No to Size Zero:" How Judging Thin Women Doesn't Promote Body Acceptance

by s.e. smith

Lashing out at thin women to tell them they aren’t wanted isn’t the way to address disparities and prejudices in fashion.

read more

04 Apr 23:03

LinkedIn Endorsements and How to Turn That Shit Off

by Erika Napoletano
Hamstahs

HOORAY!

how to remove_linkedin_endorsementsSome of the folks reading this blog have endorsed me on LinkedIn. This is automatically going to turn me into an ass monkey in someone’s eyes. Fine. I’m an ass monkey.

But I’m an ass monkey that wants you to stop using LinkedIn Endorsements. For. Fuck’s. Sake.

**Note: the language doesn’t get any cleaner from here on out. You’ve been warned.**

First, I’m going to talk about why LinkedIn Endorsements are about as meaningful as having Paris Hilton teach etiquette classes to pre-teen girls. Once I’m done spouting off, I’m going to teach you how to turn them off. You already know how I feel about unqualified connection requests (and apparently, most of you feel the same way).

The Idiocy of LinkedIn Endorsements

Here’s the bottom line about LinkedIn Endorsements: who cares? I know they’re bullshit. You should know they’re bullshit. If you don’t know that they’re bullshit, let’s define why they’re bullshit once and for all.

There are many reasons to connect with people on LinkedIn. Not all of those connections will be people who have direct knowledge or experience as to what’s it’s like to work with you.

The only “barrier to entry” for offering a LinkedIn endorsement is being someone’s connection on the LinkedIn platform. Now, I’m sure that the passengers on the Titanic would not be endorsing Edward Smith for his sea captaining skills. Did they directly work with Smith? No, but I do feel they’re likely a good judge of his experience. But he’s dead. Just like 1,502 passengers on the ship. But that still leaves roughly 700 people who could likely vouch for the fact that Smith missed a giant chunk of ice in the Atlantic martini.

Which brings me to another round of WHO FUCKING CARES?! When the barrier to entry on a LinkedIn Endorsement is only that someone’s clicked a button to acknowledge that they accept a connection, who the hell is giving any credence to Endorsements?

Here’s a snapshot of my Endorsements on LinkedIn:

how to turn off linkedin endorsements

Now, the only endorsement I really give a rat’s ass about is the one highlighted in red. Guess what? I created that category myself, fully embracing the sheer idiocy of LinkedIn endorsements and figured to hell with it. If people are going to offer me an endorsement on a skill and they’ve never met me, by gawdalmighty, here’s one they can click with fucking certainty.

Blogging? Thank you. After nearly 700 posts since 2006, I hope I know what I’m doing. But then again, shouldn’t other people be the judge of that when they stop by my blog?

Online Advertising? I really know fuckall about this. Facebook ads, their promoted posts, and a deep interest in LinkedIn advertising are the extent of it, I’m afraid.

Published Author? Yes, I am. Twice. But then again, so is this guy. Now you can see how useful broad categories like this are. Kill me now.

It all comes down to an ego-centric circle jerk. Every time I see a fresh Endorsement notification, I feel like the girl who got invited to a random “no, no, I swear it’s NOT an orgy” party and I get stuck hiding in the corner behind a ficus for the entire evening because my ride is involved in a kind of sandwich they don’t sell at Subway.

I’m leaving the Endorsements party. It’s creepy and I didn’t ask to be here. Maybe you’re ready to leave, too.

Let’s carpool.

Now — how do we get these fuckers off our LinkedIn profiles?

How to Remove Endorsements from Your LinkedIn Profile (or disable them completely)

Removing Endorsements from your LinkedIn profile is so damn easy that I feel like a chump for not figuring it out on my own. A big hat tip goes out to my friend Rich Mackey for giving me the gist so I could share this illustrated guide with you.

Step 1: Click on Edit Profile

how to removed linkedin endorsements

 

Step #2: Scroll down to Skills & Expertise (cough) and click the EDIT pencil icon

Screen shot 2013-04-01 at 9.12.14 PM

Step #3: Opt to hide Endorsements in 3 simple steps.

removed linkedin endorsements from profile

You’re done. All that will show are skills that YOU choose to have displayed on your profile for search purposes or whatnot.

People can no longer offer their nonsensical “vouchings”. And you, my friends, are now free of those useless notifications that someone’s endorsed you.

Want real endorsements? Ask your customers and clients for testimonials. Put them on your website. Make them easy to find and make sure they depict the work you do and how your clients feel when you do it for them. LinkedIn isn’t the only game in town when it comes to building a credible portfolio for your brand of awesome. Stop letting others — the platforms and the people — define how others see you.

That’s your domain, friend. Take it back and make the rules.

 

Comments

 
03 Apr 23:43

When and Why Did We Stop Crucifying People?

by Brian Palmer

Sado-masochist Robert Garrison will be nailed to a cross in public view in Los Angeles on Easter Sunday. Garrison says the display will honor the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, while others say it’s offensive to Christians. Is that why crucifixions disappeared from the Christian world in the first place?



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03 Apr 23:11

Bill to allow employer access to Facebook passwords rejected

Hamstahs

What a ridiculous idea. They can't ask for our passwords to email or anything else, so why Facebook?

An amendment that would have allowed bosses to ask for a worker's Facebook or other social media password during company investigations was withdrawn on Wednesday from a bill in the Legislature.
03 Apr 16:43

X-Men Origins: Cyclops Cat [Video]

by Geeks are Sexy

Behold, the X-Men franchise has a new character: Cyclops Cat!

[Kaipotainment | Via OW]

03 Apr 16:41

Cat gets his mind blown



Cat gets his mind blown

29 Mar 20:08

I assure you, there’s nothing of interest going on in here.

by Jenny the bloggess

This is the typical view from my toilet:

I can feel that stare from 10 yards away. Not that my toilet is 10 yards from the bathroom door. Because that would be ridiculous. And a total waste of space.

A close-up:

"Hey. What's going on in there?"

And this is me screaming at Hunter S. Thomcat:  STOP LOOKING AT ME.  Seriously.  Stop.  Find something productive to do.  GO AWAY.

Victor:  What?  Are you yelling at me?

me:  No.  I’m in the bathroom.  I JUST WANT SOME PRIVACY.

Victor:  Um...okay.  Then maybe stop yelling at me.

me:  OH MY GOD, THERE IS NOTHING OF INTEREST GOING ON IN HERE.  STOP STARING AT ME.

Victor:  I’M IN THE KITCHEN.  WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME?

me:  I’M NOT TALKING TO YOU, VICTOR.  OH MY GOD, JUST TAKE A DAMN PICTURE ALREADY.

Victor:  What is wrong with you?

me:  I CAN’T PEE WHEN YOU’RE LOOKING AT ME.

Victor:  I’M NOT LOOKING AT YOU, CRAZY.

me:  VICTOR, I’M NOT TALKING TO YOU.  I’M TRYING TO REASON WITH THE CAT.

Victor:  Of course you are.

28 Mar 21:48

Packages sealed with "Atheist" tape go missing 10x more often than controls

by Robert T. Gonzalez

Does the United States Postal Service discriminate against atheists? A recent experiment suggests it does. ATHEIST SHOES is a German based-company that, as its name suggests, makes comfy kicks "for people who don't believe in god(s)." The company regularly ships shoes, like the ones pictured above, to America. When it does, it seals its boxes with tape featuring the company logo, which is stylized as "ATHEIST · ATHEIST · ATHEIST" (see below). But these shipments often run into problems.

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