gabbie

[collegehumor]

So remember how Brave Ground Standing Hero George Zimmerman was arrested for domestic violencing his girlfriend? Of course you do, because it was just the other day, and even if you missed the headline, you are not the least bit surprised because that sure does sound like goofy ol’ George, doesn’t it?

Well, it turns out there is a perfectly logical explanation for why George had to break all his girlfriend’s stuff and point his gun in her face and also choke her a week before that. It is The Media’s fault, of course, for turning previously Real Nice Guy George Zimmerman into Still Real Nice Guy But With Issues George Zimmerman. Here, let Mr. Jack Cashill of World Net Daily (so you know it should be taken very seriously) explain:

“I’ve talked to his father and his brother and they said he’s just not the same person. I would say PTSD is probably a pretty good description of what’s going on,” Cashill told WND. “They took his job, took his marriage, the whole thing cost him tremendously and the media gloried in his screw-ups.”

Ever since George Zimmerman killed that kid and the whole world was SO MEAN about it, he has had The Stress and The Trauma. (As for killing Trayvon Martin, he’s just fine about that.) That is the only reason why he can’t seem to stop domestic violencing all the ladies in his life and breaking their stuff and also driving too fast. We are guessing Zimmerman’s PTSD probably retroactively applies to that other time that other lady got a restraining order against him for, yup, domestic violencing her, way back in 2005, before he even got all stressed out because he killed a kid — but let’s skip that part, because that would lend credence to the theory that maybe George Zimmerman is, and always has been, an actual piece of shit and we certainly wouldn’t want that.

So we’re all very glad Cashill cleared that up for us. He is, after all, A Expert on how the world has been so mean to Zimmerman. He wrote a book about it, and no, we did not read it because we do not hate ourselves that much, but it seems to explain how it was actually the media and President Obama who killed Trayvon Martin or something. Be right back, going to vomit our brains out.

Okay, back. So, as Cashill says, shame on the government and the media for trying to ruin George Zimmerman’s life by forcing him to continue doing awful things to people, which he has actually done his whole life but now there’s a good reason:

Cashill said he believes the media and federal government’s relentless pursuit of Zimmerman drove the man to ruin his own life.

“Soon as the verdict came in, everything changed,” he said. “There’s a weekend of hubbub, but then they didn’t want to talk about it anymore. They didn’t want to revisit it because they know how guilty they are. His life is ruined by what they’ve done to him.”

So in conclusion, George Zimmerman is a victim, and we should all be very ashamed.

[Right Wing Watch]

It kills me that people have the time/energy/motivation for something like this when I often can't even muster up the energy to wave my dog away from the poop she's eating. Jesus Christ, Internet. What are you on? And where can I get it? (And do you accept bitcoin?)

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George Zimmerman, the gun-loving nutcase who killed BUT DID NOT MURDER unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, has been arrested on domestic violence charges and is currently en route to the Seminole County Jail, according to Sheriff Don Eslinger. WESH-Channel 2 is reporting that law enforcement officials said the dispute involved his girlfriend.

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Between Witches of East End and the Donatella Versace and Anna Nicole Smith biopics, Lifetime is THE television channel for fun, campy programming about fascinating/batshit women. Now the network is continuing that streak by releasing the poster for their movie about Massachusetts' best cultural export, Lizzie Borden. The movie, entitled Lizzie Borden Took an Ax, features a very a mischievous-looking Christina Ricci, who is entirely unconcerned about getting her parents' blood on the bottom of her cute nightgown. Check out the full poster at Entertainment Weekly.

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This past weekend, due to the end of Daylight Savings Time, many of us set our clocks ahead one hour, which proved to be foolish because apparently we were supposed to set them back one hour, but that is beside the point. What is important is that we, as a civilized society, embraced this change. We seized the opportunity to screw around with time. This is a good thing.

Some have recently argued against Daylight Savings Time, even going so far as to propose reducing the number of time zones in America to two from four¹. I have a better plan. Instead of reducing the number of time zones, let’s increase them. To nineteen. Nineteen time zones, separated by nine minutes.

Horizontal Time: A Tribute To America's Past And Future

Before you immediately agree to this obvious plan and begin changing your clocks, let me explain how it would work. Our map illustrates the new nineteen U.S. time zones. They are separated by nine minutes each, more or less. Under my plan, after you get past Chicago (Angry Time), the time zones start to become more intuitive because they subdivide horizontally rather than vertically. Driving from Montana to Arizona is like metaphorically going back in time, only literally. Because you will actually be going back in time. By nine minutes for every time zone. Also, as you can see, the new time zones will have really cool names.

Naturally, the first question is: Why does this map look so shitty? Please, just try to focus on the time zones.² Beginning with the top right northern-most section of the map, note that Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire are now on Syrup Time, which should be completely obvious.

Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut will fall under Ye Olde Shoppe Time, a tribute to that region’s rich history of having lots of stores called Ye Olde Shoppes everywhere. Sometimes the S’s are even spelled like F’s.

Note that Indiana does not have a time zone. No one really knows why. Hey, it’s a free country and if you don’t want to have a time zone that’s your decision.

The New York City tri-state area pretty much has its own time zone because the people there are very, very selfish. City Time will lose a minute every day because the pace is just… whatever. People hurry around all the time, push each other to get on the subway and yell stuff at each other and there is another train right behind this one. One minute away. Look, you can actually see it! The next train is right there. It’s right there! And it’s not even crowded. Why do you have to push yourself onto this one? Wait one minute. Wait just one fucking minute! But no one ever does. So New Yorkers lose one minute a day. That means a week from today 7:53 will actually be 7:46. That’s a half an hour a month just gone. An entire day-and-a-half every year just vanishes. Good job. I hope you’re happy.

Some might point out: I'm confused. This map seems completely random, almost as if the time zones were drawn by a five year old. This confusion is understandable because the time zones were, in fact, drawn by my five-year-old daughter, so I think we can all agree that these are actually pretty good time zones for someone who is five and that the Twilight Sparkle time zone (Louisiana, of course!) is the prettiest.

How Easy Will This Be For Everyone? So Easy

Another obvious question is: Wouldn’t this plan create a weird class of “Timey People” who can somehow quickly and amazingly calculate the time between all the seemingly-randomly-drawn time zones? Come on. The answer is of course it would. If it’s 1:54 in City Time, then clearly it’s 1:33 in Angry Time, 1:02 in Piney Time and only 12:48 in Hey Time, right? I know this because I am one of the Timey People. Poor, non-Timey People. What good are your fancy wristwatches now?

Obviously, under this new time zone system, a key concern is, What time does the Super Bowl start?³ The answer is 9 p.m. Under the new system, everything starts at 9. By the way, good luck getting a dinner reservation at 9 because that’s when everything starts. Your OpenTable reservation will have to be for either 5:30 or 10:30 like everyone else. We will still meet for dinner at 9, of course, because everything starts at 9, but it will really be either 5:30 or 10:30. Only the stars eat at "real 9."

A Key To Your Exciting New Time Zones

• Syrup Time – Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire. Boringly obvious.

• Ye Olde Shoppe Time – Connecticut, Maffachufettf, Rhode Ifland.

• City Time – Tri-state area. A bunch of selfish jerks.

• Itchy Time – The rest of New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, both Virginias. Christ, I get itchy just thinking about those states.

• High Time – Ohio and Michigan. I am not a cop.

• Elvis Time – The cool parts of Tennessee, like Nashville and Memphis, and pretty much all of Mississippi and Alabama.

• Wrasslin’ Time – Kentucky, the sad half of Tennessee, Georgia and the Carolinas.

• Penal Time – Florida.

“Why penal time, man?”
“No reason.”
“Is it because of my brother? Cause he’s on parole now.”
“No, it’s just, look: it’s the state. Like, the shape of it. It’s sort of a pun.”
“I hate puns.”

• Twilight Sparkle Time – Louisiana by Lulu.

• Angry Time – Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, pretty much what you’d expect.

• Piney Time – Heavily pine-infested areas in what I believe may be Colorado.

• Cornpone Time – Nebraska mostly. Also South Dakota, I guess?

• Walleye Time – Minnesota, Wisconsin. Just think about it.

• Fringe Time – All the states at the top past Minnesota. Basically what we privately refer to as the Canada states.

• Cow Time – On the map you’ll see this large region and be like, “Yep, that’s pretty much Cow Time alright.”

• Old Timey Time – Arizona, parts of the Old West where it’s like deserty and most of the towns are old timey towns.

• Hammer Time™ – Everyone should say Hammer Time like the guy in that song, “It’s 9 p.m. hammahtiiime.” That way you are giving out important time information in a whimsical way.

• Craggy Time – I don’t even know what the names of these states are, except Las Vegas.

• Hey Time – Quick, based on this conversation, guess where I am?

“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“…”
“…”
“You hit any traffic?”
“Just the usual.”
“Cool.”

Kevin Depew is a writer and editor living in New York City. He is available in all the usual locations.

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!”  Jane Austen says in her novel Pride and Prejudice. This very line, along with her image will appear on a new 10 pound banknote by 2017. One wonders what Jane might’ve said if she knew that she were to become the next face of the “tenner”.

Bank of England announced that the image on the bill will be a 1870 engraving commissioned by Austen’s nephew, James Edward Austen along with the  quote about the joy of reading.

Dr. Paula Byrne, the academic, who wrote  The Real Jane Austen, said the chosen image makes Austen look like “a pretty doll with big doe eyes” and called the bill “a 19th Century airbrushed makeover.” And she said many other things which make her sound like a very unhappy woman:

I can’t believe they have gone for such a saccharine picture. Jane Austen was a supreme social satirist, and some of her writing was quite dark, but they’ve chosen a picture that makes her look a really cosy, middle-class writer…

The costume is wrong and the image creates a myth Austen was a demure spinster and not a deep-thinking author.  She was edgy for her time and the portrait by her sister Cassandra depicts an intelligent determined woman. 

Personally, I disagree that on Cassandra’s sketch Jane looks all that intelligent or determined. To me, Jane on the sketch looks like scullery maid the way scullery maids look in low-budget British period dramas. But it’s my opinion.

Paula Byrne again, “Jane  Austen is the funniest writer to walk this planet, and she’s been made to look dim-witted…”

So much emotion… Why? There is no need to rely on Bank of England for a more satisfying portrait. It’s your money. Improve upon it as soon as new bills come out. Get a pen. Basic colors will do. De-glamorize  Jane to your heart’s desire, right on the money. Make her look funny! Borrow a few offending bills if you must.  Not talented enough to do Jane justice? Involve friends and family. Turn it into a social occasion. How about  wine-and-cheese-and–Jane-deglamorizing party? Does the image below looks like a “cozy, middle-class writer?” And I’m not even a great money-defacing talent!

And this is Caroline Criado-Perez, the activist, who runs an organization dedicated to increasing the presence of female experts in the media and a campaigner for a woman’s face to appear on British banknotes.

The face — head and shoulders, actually — behind the face of Jane Austen on a 10 pound bill

For about 12 hours following the announcement Ms.  Criado-Perez received ”about 50 abusive tweets an hour”, some containing threats of violence, death and/or rape.  Too steep a prize to pay for activism, won’t you say? This piece of news is rather disturbing… Does Caroline’s ordeal have something to do with people’s outrage that Charles Darwin was “retired” as the face of the British “tenner”? Or is it the choice of the Jane Austen’s image to appear on banknote that upset them? Jane’s “all wrong costume”, perhaps? But then again, the surge of outrage is misdirected.

Hundreds of tweets are investigated for possible offences under the Malicious Communications Act.  The Woman Who Got Jane Austen on British Money Wants to Change How Twitter Handles Abuse.  Some 21 year old was put under arrest. It came to this. Ah, well… Life is but a nasty tweet.

Slideshow below features Women Writers On The Banknotes everywhere in the world where such currency is found.

I read the article Why we love cat memes in Salon. It’s about felines in arts. And about the author’s many cats. I thought I might use the pretext to display a few images of cats I have.  But it turned out not such a great article after all. Besides, everyone is probably sick of internet cats everywhere anyway.

Instead, as a tribute to felines, I post a love story (historically accurate, all things considered) about  a Queen, a Cardinal and a Cat.

Everyone heard of the Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers.  The beautiful Queen Anne of Austria, unhappy in her marriage to the King Louis XIII of France, falls in love with the dashing Duke of Buckingham. Cardinal Richelieu is determined to rat on her to the King, but he needs a tangible proof of her infidelity. The Cardinal could’ve been successful in destroying the Queen’s honor, if it weren’t for d’Artagnan and his three brave musketeers friends…

Frans Pourbus, the Younger (Flemish, 1569-1622) Anne of Austria (1601–1666) as a young Princess

However, before the handsome English Duke stole Anna’s heart, there was another love in her life, which could have changed the history of France. Its flame was feeble and destined to die before the conflagration ensued… And it’s all because of Miriam.

Philippe de Champaigne. Louis XIII. 1665

Anne of Austria, the Spanish princess of the House of Habsburg, was fourteen when she married the French King Louis XIII. Cardinal Richelieu was appointed as a confessor of the young queen. Domineering and ambitious man of forty, he was severe, cold and calculating. He never let emotions gain control over reason. To reach his goals he used treachery, fraud and every dirty trick under the stars. “Give me just six lines written by the hand of an honest man, and I’ll find a darn good reason to hang him.”

Cats were the only creatures that the Cardinal truly loved. Numerous cats roamed the palace. The fluffy white Miriam was the Cardinal’s absolute favorite. He took her everywhere with him and her hair was the constant plague of his opulent robes.

Miriam

But then something odd happened. Cardinal Richelieu fell passionately in love with the Queen. Contemporaries admit that by then, barely out of her teens, Anna blossomed into a majestic beauty, the beauty and charm that captivated a cruel heart of the cruelest man in France.

At first, the young Queen was unimpressed by Richelieu’s courtship. To her – vivacious and young — he seemed old and boring. “If this living mummy will dance sarabande for me, I’ll be ready for a lot,” she teased him. And he did! Forgetting his usual caution, he dropped his robe and danced quite vigorous Spanish sarabande.

Anna was no fool. She knew  whose hands held the real power, and that there was no better ally to be found in the entire kingdom. But the true love had no chance. The Queen and the Cardinal held only a few secret meetings, and then no more. All because of Miriam!

Charles Édouard Delort (1841–1895) The Cardinal’s Leisure

The moment overcome by passion Cardinal makes his move – Anna’s eyes would start itching and fill with tears. She’d cry. And she’d cry ever more with every step Richelieu would make toward her. It was a curse of the House of Habsburg – a strange malady, unnamed at the time, that we know now as allergy. Anna suffered particularly badly being exposed to animal fur. Her estrangement from her husband, a passionate lover of hounds and horses, might’ve had the same reason.

Miriam was by the Cardinal’s side way too often, and his robes were abundantly covered by her hair. And Anna cried and cried, until such time that she no longer could stand the sight of the poor most powerful man of the kingdom.

One day soon, the brilliant Duke of Buckingham will visit the Louvre. But this would be another love story, the one worthy of the Alexandre Dumas’ pen.

Peter Paul Rubens. Portrait of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. 1625

During a Reddit AMA with Benedict Cumberbatch, one fan asked a very important question: "Do you, Matt Smith, and Tom Hiddleton have cheekbone polishing parties?" His answer? "We like nothing better than buffing our Zygoma. And imagining a horny time traveling long overcoat purple scarf wearing super sleuth nordic legend fuck fantasy. Get to work on that, internet." You heard the man. Get to work.

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Is there anything that stupid assholes love more than unfunny rape jokes? The latest installment in the saga of the neverending love affair between awful men and the women who don't want to have sex with them comes from one of the Phi Kappa Tau brothers at Georgia Tech, and it's a doozy. Called "Luring Your Rapebait," it's got everything a douchebag could want: rap slang, dude slang, and, most importantly, dick slang.

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If cats are supposed to be such geniuses, WTF is this shit? Signed, my dog. (Who has just eaten another turd.)

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No one could ever do Whitney better than Whitney herself, but CHVRCHES is working a strong game right now, and they change the chords on this chorus nicely, and it's all very TGIDF.

About halfway through what is already a delightful video of TWO otters lounging on a stump, one of those otters (the more gifted one, obviously) begins to juggle a rock, “juggle,” in this context, meaning of course to roll lazily across one’s fuzzy belly. Still though! Otters are alarmingly dexterous. They should clearly be in charge of all the things. Bow to your otter overlords

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There are only four American doctors left who openly include third-trimester abortion in their practice. They're profiled in the new documentary After Tiller, which opens in New York tonight. All four of these doctors were close friends and colleagues of Dr. George Tiller, who was assassinated in Kansas in May 2009, and they take on significant personal risks in their fight to keep late abortion available; they believe in their work deeply, while understanding that many people view it as murder. Fewer than 1% of abortions in this country are performed in the third trimester. It's illegal in all but 9 states, and according to a 2011 Gallup poll, only 10% of Americans are in favor of the practice.

Susan Robinson is one of these four doctors. We spoke on the phone earlier this week.

You've been practicing medicine since the seventies as an OB-GYN, and you started off your career in a Catholic hospital. I'm guessing that there wasn't much talk of abortion there?

Oh, absolutely not. I did my fellowship and residency in perinatology, which is high-risk obstetrics, and we weren't ever supposed to discuss abortion. For example, if we were performing an amniocentesis and detected an abnormality, even a possibly fatal one, we were never supposed to even suggest the option to the mother. Instead we told them that the test was there to help them prepare for the reality of having that child.

Have you always been pro-choice?

I have. My sister had an abortion before it was legal, and it never occurred to me that there was anything morally wrong with what she did. It was a horrible time for her to be pregnant and it was horrible time for her to get un-pregnant. But, through medical school and residency, it never really came before my consciousness that I wasn't doing abortions personally. I never thought about it until David Gunn was shot in Pensacola, which is when I realized how actively people were trying to scare doctors out of providing abortions. I filed that thought away in my mind, sort of hoping that people wouldn't get pushed out out of the field; I didn't know yet that these doctors are very hard to scare.

Then I was living in the Boston area, and there were the shootings at Brookline, and that really knocked me off my chair. I said to the people I worked for, "I am going to do abortions at Planned Parenthood." And although we weren't supposed to do abortions in that practice, everyone there said, "I get it."

And now you've been doing abortion exclusively for thirteen years. You also teach in the field. How does abortion practice and education fit within the landscape of medicine?

Among doctors, I get two distinct reactions. I say I do abortion medicine, and they either say "Thank you so much for what you do," or they turn away in disgust. It's not like if you're a neurosurgeon or a perinatologist, and people go, "Oh really! How amazing," and they defer to you. In the hierarchy of medical specialties, abortion medicine is very low.

But the doctors who are pro-choice, and the doctors who tell you that they either would do it themselves if they could or dared to: they'll often go out of their way to express appreciation. I've had doctors tell me that they themselves had late abortions because of fetal abnormalities.

If I were a medical student and wanted to specialize in abortion medicine, would it be difficult for me to get training?

Not for first and second trimester abortions. I think about half of residencies in family medicine or OB offer first-trimester experience as either an opt-in or opt-out part of training. There are Ryan fellowships, also, for people seeking this training, and you'd come out of that knowing how to do second-trimester abortions. But if you wanted to learn how to do later abortion, you'd have to come to one of the three clinics that performs them, and ask them if they're willing to take on a trainee.

Do you get trainees? Are young people willing to commit to this profession?

Yes! We just finished a year of training with a family medicine doctor who's just completed a year of training with us. Not only is she wonderful with her patients, but she's brilliant with her hands and so compassionate and smart. We were so happy to have her.

I read an interview with you recently where you talked about Aron Ralston, the mountain climber who cut off his hand in order to escape being trapped underneath a boulder. You said that women having third-trimester abortions need them the way that Aron needed to cut off his hand. Can you tell me more about that? What's the difference between how people perceive late abortions and what you see at your clinic?

I think that the public perceives first of all that late abortion could be completely eliminated if people would only get their act together and have their abortions earlier, which is completely untrue.

I also think that people assume that women do this casually—that they've known they were pregnant for thirty weeks and then were on their way down to the hair salon and they saw the abortion clinic and they decided to just walk in to avoid the inconveniences of motherhood. That also is completely untrue. No matter how available birth control and first-trimester and second-trimester abortion is, you are always going to have the need for later abortions. A woman would never do this casually. The procedure lasts three or four days, and is fairly disagreeable.

Three or four days, I had no idea.

Yes. It depends on what kind of a cervix you have, but in some cases it can go from Tuesday to Saturday.

Can you tell me more about the "these people need to get their act together" argument?

Well, a large percentage of our patients had no idea that they were pregnant. People go, "How could this possibly be?" Well, look at that reality show. It happens. Maybe you're a little heavy and you already have irregular periods, or you had intercourse once, several months ago, and the guy said he pulled out and there's no sex education in your school so you think everything's fine. Or you never have periods because you're very thin, or a doctor has told you you were infertile.

I could tell you a million reasons why women who are perfectly smart—and they are, these are not stupid women—don't come to know they are pregnant. They have no weight changes, they don't feel sick, they don't feel movement, or if they do they think it's gas. Suddenly someone says, "Hmm, your stomach's looking big, have you taken a pregnancy test?" And the person may have taken a test, and it may have come out negative—I've had women that only got a positive on their third test. And either way they think they just got pregnant. They have no idea they're in their 24th week. So they make an appointment for an abortion, and it takes a few weeks, and they have their ultrasound and find out that they're at 27 weeks, which is too far for an abortion anywhere. So then what happens? They either give up or have a baby, or they go on the Internet and they find us.

What's the farthest that someone's ever traveled to come to you?

I guess probably from Afghanistan. This was a woman in the US military, a woman who couldn't get leave to get her abortion until she was that far along. I've also had women from Saudi Arabia, where seeking or doing an abortion is a capital crime, and a couple people from the UK and France. We get them from Canada all the time, although the Canadians are very good with abortion care up to 24 weeks. And all the states, definitely; women have come to us from every state.

The decision on whether to carry out these abortions is up to you completely. In what sort of situation do you say no?

It gets tricky, of course. The further along a woman is with a fetus that's healthy—that's really where it gets hard. If someone finds out about a significant fetal anomaly that's bad enough that they want to terminate the pregnancy, then I believe that's their discretion. Some feel like, "Sure, I can take care of a kid with Down's no problem," and then two months later they're told that the baby also has an irreparable cardiac defect. They're told that the baby will have to have a dozen surgeries in its first year, with a very small chance that it will live past a certain age. And in those cases I see it as the parents' discretion, if they think their child's life will be filled with too much pain and suffering.

There's a disabled-rights side to this, and I don't doubt the ability of people with disabilities to find happiness and fulfillment in their lives, but what I have a problem with is the "I could have been aborted" line. Hell, I'm glad I wasn't aborted too! I just find that argument specious. When parents are saying, "We do not feel we can adequately cope with that issue," I believe them, and I don't think they'd have an easy time putting a child with severe disabilities up for adoption successfully.

So how do you draw lines in the case of a healthy fetus?

It's hard. Essentially I have to say to myself, "Is this a very compelling story?" And I feel very bad about that because who am I to say, "Well, it's compelling because you're 11," and then I see a similar case when the girl's 14 and I think, okay… but then, what if you're 15, what if you're 16? How do we draw these lines? What is the ethical difference between doing an abortion at 29 and 32 weeks? Is there a meaningful ethical difference? Can I justify it? Will I have to justify it, and to whom?

It comes down to a question of safety, many times. If I feel that there is a likelihood that there will be complications, and I won’t be able to finish the procedure in the office—and we’re an office, not a surgery center—I will only do the procedure if there is a fetal anomaly. Not for elective procedures. And I say “elective” as if the woman is choosing between pairs of shoes, and it’s not like that, not even close, but I will turn that patient down. For example, in the movie, I had a patient from France and she just desperately did not want to be pregnant—but she was 35 weeks, and gestational age is plus or minus three weeks, so she could've been at 38 weeks, and that’s just too far along. It wouldn’t be safe.

From the documentary, and from talking to you now, it seems like you evaluate each case one by one, along many dimensions; you seem really engaged with the specific difficulty of every case. 

Yes. Absolutely. I also have to take other judgments into account. I might accept an 11-year-old incest victim even if I believe the procedure will be risky, because I’ll be able to trust that if I have to transport her to the hospital, people will understand why I accepted her as a patient, and it won’t result in the clinic getting closed down.

Do you often have patients that require emergency care like that?

Well, not often, but things go wrong when you do abortions. They don't usually go seriously wrong, but it’s a complex procedure. Still, if you compare abortion at any gestational age to childbirth, childbirth is significantly more likely to kill the mother than abortion, which is something that no OB-GYN will ever tell you.

I was really moved and amazed by the scene where you're writing down a baby’s name, noting the family’s request for a memory box and a viewing, showing the little ink footprints. Do families often want to engage with their baby like this after an abortion? How many people are ready to—as you say—say hello to their baby at the same time that they’re telling it goodbye? 

With fetal anomaly patients, we ask them right up front if they plan to hold their baby after it's born. These patients, their emotional needs are so different from the ones who are looking at their pregnancy as an absolute disaster, who are just thinking, “Get it out of me, please, please, please.” Those patients—the maternal indications patients—they are not relating to their fetus as a baby, they’re relating to it as a problem.

But with a fetal indications patient—if she refers to it as her baby, I'll refer to it as her baby. If she’s named the baby, I’ll use the baby’s name too. I would say that most of these patients do decide to see and hold their baby, although many of them have a hard time dealing with the idea at first. We’ll take remembrance photographs, we’ll give them a teddy bear, the footprints. I mean, imagine being six months pregnant and finding out your baby’s missing half its brain, and you’ve got this nursery you’ve painted at home, you’re so ready—I don’t want them to go home from the procedure with absolutely nothing to remember and honor the baby, and its birth.

Wow. You’ll say “birth”?

Yes. I try to mirror what will be the most consoling to the patient. In general, these patients—fetal indications—do talk about giving birth, so I’ll say that as well.

What is it like watching these patients say goodbye?

It is very difficult. It’s the saddest thing on earth, I think sometimes. They cry, and I cry, and sometimes they’ll ask for a baptism or a prayer. I’ve got some little non-denominational prayers that I’ll say with the families.

To simultaneously sustain these ideas—that you desperately loved and wanted this baby that’s here in your arms, and also that you just committed yourself to ending its life—it's one of the most complicated emotional situations I can imagine. In these cases—I am sorry for this macabre question—the baby is dead, right? They never meet their baby alive? 

That’s not macabre! That’s a good question. Yes, that’s the first part of the procedure. We sedate the patient and euthanize their fetus, their baby, with an injection. The fetus passes away, doesn’t feel anything.

What is harder for you, what you see on the inside of the clinic or the resistance you get from the outside?

Oh, of course, the inside. By far, it's the hardest and also the most rewarding. The total sadness of the fetal anomaly patients, the gratitude and relief of the maternal patients as they leave—the idea of being able to be with someone at a time of crisis and actually make it better for them. You can't solve their problems, you can’t erase what this pregnancy and this procedure is going to mean to them, but you can ease their pain and their transition by facilitating their saying goodbye, by being kind to them, by listening, by not interrupting, by not judging them for what they feel they need to do.

Are you afraid for your personal safety on a day-to-day basis?

I’ve had a lot of advice on security. I’ve had FBI, federal marshals, domestic terrorism people advising me. I don’t like to talk about what I do specifically to protect myself, but this is an aspect of the job, certainly. Put it this way, I’ve read Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear a few times.

How do you see reproductive rights in the political arena right now?

I see things moving crazily to the right. I think that the extreme, right-wing, misogynist religious fanatics have basically hijacked the Republican party and are moving toward being able to hijack the Democrats too. I'm appalled at the hubris of these legislators who, one after another,  think they can make more sensible decisions about a woman's personal, private reproductive decisions than the woman herself. They know nothing about these situations. They don't know a thing about later abortions, or why women seek them out, and yet they presume that they should be making these decisions.

I don't think this belongs in the legislature at all. The decision on abortion belongs to the woman, to her family, to her clergy person if she has one, to her doctor. Women don't ever need legislators telling them what to do with the contents of their uterus.

What do you hope people come away with after seeing the film, or reading this?

I really hope that they'll understand that these late abortion decisions are carefully made by these women. They have been thought out, wrestled with, agonized over. They are never casual. And the need for late-term abortions will never go away.

• Ketchup and mustard on a hot dog

• Your first name and your last name

• M.A.S.H. the game but you played it in a hot air balloon

• M.A.S.H. the show but you watched it while puking

• Spitballs

• Smoothies

• These art museum gift shop pencils

• Groundhogs

• The Vitruvian Man

• Swamps

• Mashed potatoes but you ate them on the second floor of IKEA

• Inbreeding

• Homonyms

Previously: Drake's Recipe for Pound Cake

Dayna Evans is a writer and a musician. You can find her writing here, her music here, and her tweets at @hidayna.

Meet Kuzya, a stray cat who wondered into Russia's Novorossiysk Library and was so beloved, he was actually hired. Like, to shelve books and shit.

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The Ambassador’s Daughter

The Apothecary’s Daughter

The Aviator’s Wife

The Baker’s Daughter

The Baker’s Wife

The Bishop’s Daughter

The Bloodletter’s Daughter

The Bonesetter’s Daughter

The Bookseller’s Daughter

The Burgermeister’s Daughter

The Butcher’s Granddaughter

The Calligrapher’s Daughter

The Candidate’s Wife

The Captain’s Daughter

The Centurion’s Wife

The Chief’s Granddaughter

The Coach’s Wife

The Colonel’s Nieces

The Dairyman’s Daughter

The Diplomat’s Wife

The Ditchdigger’s Daughters

The Doctor’s Wife

The Dopeman’s Wife

The Emancipator’s Wife

The English Gentleman’s Wife

The Fisherman’s Wife

The Florist’s Daughter

The General’s Daughter

The Governor’s Daughter

The Governor’s Wife

The Hangman’s Daughter

The Headmaster’s Wife

The Heretic’s Wife

The Inquisitor’s Wife

The King of Elfland’s Daughter

The Kingmaker’s Daughter

The Kitchen God’s Wife

The Legate’s Daughter

The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife

The Lightkeeper’s Daughter

The Madman’s Daughter

The Merchant’s Daughter

The Merry Monarch’s Wife

The Millionaire’s Wife

The Mortician’s Wife

The Murderer’s Daughters

The Nazi Officer’s Wife

The Parson’s Daughter

The Pastor’s Wife

The Pilot’s Wife

The Potter’s Daughter

The Preacher’s Daughter

The Prisoner’s Wife

The Professor’s Daughter

The Reverend’s Wife

The Rock Star’s Daughter

The Saddlemaker’s Wife

The Salaryman’s Wife

The Scavenger’s Daughters

The Sea Captain’s Wife

The Sea Captain’s Wife

The Senator’s Wife

The Shepherd’s Granddaughter

The Shoemaker’s Wife

The Shogun’s Daughter

The Soldier’s Wife

The Soldier’s Wife

The Storekeeper’s Daughter

The Storekeeper’s Niece

The Storyteller’s Daughter

The Time Traveler’s Wife

The Tinker’s Daughter

The Traitor’s Wife

The Tutor’s Daughter

The Warden’s Niece

The Watchmaker’s Daughter

The Weatherman’s Daughters

The Zookeeper’s Wife

Jennifer Little is an English PhD student in New York City, focusing on late medieval love poetry, and a high school English teacher. Both pursuits require placing herself in the mindset of people whose thought-process seems entirely alien. She also enjoys knitting, singing, and drunken critique of television drama.

Actress and comedian Azie Mira Dungey used to work as a historical re-enactor at Mount Vernon. And 1- because George Washington's old stomping grounds are staffed with people acting out roles they might have had during the George Washington days and 2- Dungey is black, she played the role of a slave named Lizzy Mae. Now, she's made her experiences fielding actual stupid questions from actual stupid tourists into a video series that not only invites laughter, it encourages people to think a little harder about how we lionize the Founding Fathers as paragons of morality.

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Much like its Mod Carousel gender-swapped predecessor, a “Blurred Lines” parody called “Defined Lines” (because of gender roles, yo) made by several Auckland law students was briefly been deemed too ladybonerific for YouTube’s Council of Female Libido Deniers (it’s a very secret council).

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Michael Boatwright, a 61-year-old Navy veteran, was found unconscious in a Palm Springs Motel 6 with five tennis rackets and no memory of being Michael Boatwright. When he woke up in a hospital a few days later, he insisted that his name was Johan Ek, he lived in Sweden, he didn't know shit about tennis rackets, and he only spoke Swedish. MYSTERIES ABOUND.

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Featuring our favorite comedienne Sasheer Zamata, here are some suggestions for congratulating a friend newly affianced to someone who is, say, "medium racist" or "uses the word 'feminist' as an insult." I am really bad at faking enthusiasm, but I could definitely at least do Step 7: Gestures and Sounds ("BLAAHHHHAHHAHAHHHH!!!!!").

Someone found this otter lounging, stretching, grooming, and just generally being adorable on a wharf in Santa Cruz. It was hanging out on the same wooden platform as a bunch of sea lions, but this wee rebel was just doing his own damn thing.

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