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I'm A Wormhole!: Woman Cosplaying As A Stargate
Dance MagersKLUCK
It's Come To This: Pizza Hut Made A Doritos Crusted Pizza
Man Catches 12-Pound, 70-Year Old Lobster In California
Dance MagersHoly crap
Should Women Get Days off Work During Their Period?
Dance MagersMore like "Should husbands get days off from being at home when wife is on period?".
Ammiright?
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Photo by Lindsay Attaway
Menstruation is one of those age-old excuses for women to get out of things: "Can I be excused from gym class? It's a 'female' thing." "I can't sleep with you tonight... I'm on my period." "Sorry I'm being such a bitch! It's that time of the month."
Old "Aunt Flow" is a great excuse to have in your back pocket, because (a) it works for almost any situation and (b) it's impossible—or at least, impolite—to verify that you're actually on your period. It's so useful, in fact, that a survey from 2012 suggested that 38 percent of women use their period as a cop-out for things they don't want to do.
It's unsurprising, then, that there's an ongoing debate about whether or not menstruation should be considered a legit excuse to get out of work. This week, Gedis Grudzinskas—a respected gynecologist in London—came out and said workplaces should offer women a paid "menstrual leave"—basically, a few extra sick days for when you're on the rag.
"Some women feel really grotty when menstruating," he said in an interview with the Daily Mail. "Coming into work is a struggle, and they feel lousy."
Coming into work is a struggle for me every day, but I'd settle for a free pass on the days I'm bleeding (or the days that I say I'm bleeding—you'll never know). As per Dr. Grudzinskas's recommendation, women would get a few days each month of "menstrual leave," sort of like getting three extra sick days. (Though he clarified that this would be separate from sick days, since menstruation "is not a sickness, after all.")
Gloria Steinem called for a similar kind of thing in 1978, when she imagined what would happen if men could menstruate (including extra research into period cramps, "to prevent monthly work loss among the powerful"). But even before that, menstrual leave was an established policy in many parts of Asia: In Japan, there's a law that requires employers to let women leave work if they are "suffering" from menstruation. In Taiwan, women get an extra three sick days per year; in Indonesia, it's an extra two days per month; in South Korea, an extra day each month. A menstrual-leave policy was also debated (and then rejected) in Russia last year, wherein one politician argued that "the pain for the fair sex is often so intense that it is necessary to call an ambulance." That politician was a dude, by the way.
I couldn't find any statistics about women rushed to the ER because of their periods, but a study from 2012 claimed that menstrual pain is "severe enough to interfere with daily activities in up to 20 percent of women." But then again, is that because of actual pain or just the result of having a bulletproof excuse?
I can already hear the men's rights activists wailing about how women have their bloody panties in a twist and how a menstrual leave policy would be unfair. But it's also noteworthy that most of the people speaking out in favor of menstrual leave—including Dr. Grudzinskas—are men, who I'm sure haven't the faintest idea what having a period is like.
As a woman, I'll never tell. If you really knew what those few days each month were like, I wouldn't be able to use "that time of the month" as my one-way ticket out of anything.
Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.
$13 Samus Toy With Accidental Dual Arm Cannons Sells For $2,500 On eBay
3D-Print Your Very Own Working Stargate!
Engravings On A Shell Made 300,000 Years Before Humans Evolved
Archaeologist Stephen Munro nearly fell off his chair when he noticed patterns of straight lines purposefully etched on a fossilized clamshell. The engravings were half a million years old, which meant they'd been made by a Homo erectus—an extinct human species that predated Homo sapiens by upwards of 300,000 years.
Up Your Ugly Christmas Game w/ An Ugly Christmas Suit
With towering bones jutting out of the snow, Whale Bone Alley is Siberia's answer to Stonehenge.
With towering bones jutting out of the snow, Whale Bone Alley is Siberia's answer to Stonehenge. The 600-year-old-structure — made from 34 whale jaw bones, each 16-feet-high — was erected by indigenous tribes to create a neutral place of worship. Recently, it's become a popular destination for Western tourists.
James Cameron Promises That Avatar 2 Will Make You Soil Yourself
Dance Magers"I can tell you one thing about them. They're gonna be bitchin'. You will shit yourself with your mouth wide open."
Scott Stapp Is Broke and Living in a Hotel
Well, the vast project aimed at completely crushing the spirit of Scott Stapp, lead singer of Creed and rock 'n' roll punching bag, has worked: He's homeless, without enough money to feed himself.
That's according to a video—apparently shot using a borrowed phone—he just posted to Facebook. It sounds really awful (and not just because he incessantly smacks his lips):
The most disturbing part is the revelation of his homelessness. "Right now, I'm living in a Holiday Inn by the grace of God," he says. "There's been a couple weeks where I had to sleep in my truck. I had no money, not even for gas and food." In those two days without food, apparently things got pretty dark, and he says he "ended up in the emergency room."
In the video, Stapp—who now sorta looks like Glenn Danzig (in a good way)—provides the broad strokes of a vast conspiracy against him by the IRS, an identity thief, people at his record label, and someone who seems to be blackmailing him.
He says the IRS has frozen his bank accounts "two or three times to leave me completely penniless," although the third freeze, he claims, is due to a "clerical error," and that the IRS will return his funds in nine to ten months.
But that's just the beginning; there's also the supposed campaign to smear and humiliate him. "They're trying to discredit me, slander me, and I've even been threatened that if I went public, like I'm doing right now, that any impropriety or anything that I've ever done in my past that these individuals can get their hands on to humiliate and embarrass me, and try to ruin my credibility, that they would do that."
His record label, Wind-Up Records is apparently responsible for "royalties not paid," but they're also thieves, according to Stapp. In part of the video addressed to his son Jagger, he says "people that we know, and at the record company, and outside of that, have stolen lots of money."
But then there's the identity thief, whom he accuses of simply obtaining his passwords and draining his accounts. His bank is also culpable, he says, since bank representatives took no action after this theft—he claims they simply said, "Yeah, all the money's been taken out of your account and there's nothing we can do."
Stapp's downward spiral has been going on for a long time. I still remember reading Stephen Thompson's brutally concise AVClub review of Human Clay. (Excerpt: "Stapp's tortured, bleating windbaggery, coupled with ham-fisted riffage and take-me-higher/what-about-the-children lyrics, makes for rough, monotonous going.") But he wasn't just a critically disparaged singer, he was obviously a severely damaged dude—there was that time he allegedly went to that Florida Denny's to try and hook up with a girl he had met at an airport who turned out to be pranking him, there was that time he got into a fight with 311 in a hotel bar on Thanksgiving, there was the blowjob video with Kid Rock. The list goes on.
But three years ago, he tried to kill himself by clumsily jumping off a balcony, and got saved by TI. That seems like the kind of hitting-bottom story that would begin a slow climb to redemption, but apparently after Stapp's tell-all memoir and most recent solo album were greeted with shrugs from the general public his life took another turn for the worse. Obviously something bad is happening to the one-time rock star, even if it has nothing to do with the conspiracy he's denouncing via cameraphone.
Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.
I Steam-Cleaned My Vagina
I have a great vagina. Really, I do. I've never had a problem with yeast infections, never had a Pap smear come back abnormal, never had to deal with menstrual cramps. I have the kind of vagina that deserves to be pampered, so when I heard about "vaginal steaming," I thought to myself: Vagina, you deserve a spa day.
Vaginal steaming, sometimes called V-steaming by those too squeamish to say the word "vagina," is remarkably similar to making tea. You put a bunch of special herbs in hot water, then—and this is where the tea similarity ends—hover over it, allowing the steam to "deep-clean" your vagina and uterus. This is said to dislodge any "buildup" and can allegedly relieve hormonal imbalances, menstrual discomfort, and digestive issues.
There's a spa near me that offers V-steaming, but they charge $50 for a 30-minute session, which seems like a lot of money to pay to literally sit on a pot of hot water. So instead, I looked up "DIY V-steaming" online and found these instructions from the YinOva Center in New York:
- Pour eight cups of water (preferably purified water) into a medium-size pot.
- Place a handful of fresh herbs (about a quarter cup) into the water.
- Bring water to a soft boil (with the lid on) for five minutes.
- Turn off the heat and steep for another five minutes with the lid on.
- Pour four cups (half of the pot) of water into a bowl you've placed in your toilet.
- Wave your hand eight to ten inches over the herbal water to make sure it's not too hot.
- Remove your underwear and sit on the seat above the steaming water.
- Drape a large blanket or sheet around your waist and down to the floor to make sure no steam escapes.
- Keep yourself warm by wearing something on your feet (socks, slippers) and neck. You do not want any cold to get into your body while you are trying to warm it.
- You should feel a warm, rolling heat for about ten to 12 minutes.
- When the steam dies down, dump the water into the toilet. Starting with step four, begin the second dosage with the other half of the herbal water. If it has cooled too much you'll need to reheat it, but test again before sitting over the steam.
If you get your V-steam done at a spa, they'll seat you in chair with a little hole in the middle, which allows the steam to rise into your hoo-ha. Since I do not own a chair with a hole in the middle, I was pleased to find that the YinOva Center recommended steaming on your toilet. This would be so easy!
Vaginal steam baths come from an ancient Korean tradition called chai-yok, which uses mugwort and wormwood to cleanse the vagina. Both herbs are associated with detoxification, uterine health, and improving hormonal balance. I had never heard of either mugwort or wormwood and thought they sounded like ingredients for some kind of Wiccan magic. When I asked an employee at Whole Foods if they carried the herbs, he looked at me as if I'd asked him if they stocked crack cocaine. So I ended up ordering both on Amazon, and when they arrived, I was surprised to find that the mugwort looked and smelled exactly like sawdust—like it was chopped-up tree bark and dirt. I also found this somewhat disconcerting messaging printed on the package for wormwood:
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Look, I just want to steam my vadge, but if I come out with psychic superpowers, so be it.
Before I set a pot of water to boil, I wanted to consult a gynecologist to make sure I was doing this right, so I called up Dr. Alyssa Dweck, an ob-gyn in New York and co-author of V Is for Vagina. Dr. Dweck kind of balked when I told her what I wanted to do, but she ultimately gave me her blessing.
"Steam will bring extra blood flow to the genital area, and that helps with healing and muscle relaxation in general," she said. It also helps with stress relief—I mean, you're just sitting there on a warm pot for half an hour—which could be why V-steaming has been credited for improving fertility and menstrual cramps alike.
Dweck warned me to monitor the temperature of the steam, "because you could get a pretty bad burn in this area, and that would be awful," and to avoid using essential oils, which would be too concentrated for this sensitive area of the body.
With Dweck's advice in mind, I set a pot of water on the stove and threw in a handful of the herbs. Some women say that while they're V-steaming, they can taste the herbs on their tongue after a few minutes. I seriously hoped that didn't happen to me, because the smell of the herbs—kind of like mulch?—was fairly horrendous. It didn't look great either:
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The witch's brew
When the water was boiled and the herbs were fully steeped, I poured my "tea" into a big mixing bowl and set it in my toilet. It was dark—like, really dark—and seeing it there in my toilet, with flecks of herbs floating around on the top, gave me that same panicky feeling as when you take too much vitamin B and your pee turns neon yellow. You know there's nothing to actually worry about, but seeing those colors in your toilet bowl is simply unnerving.
I eased myself onto my seat, and at first it felt nice, like stepping into a sauna. But within a few seconds, I realized that the steam was still scorching hot. I threw in a few ice cubes to temper the steam and sat back down. As instructed, I was wearing a pair of thick socks and kept a blanket on my lap to isolate the warmth. It was uncomfortably warm for a few moments, but I relaxed into it pretty quickly, as if I were easing into a hot bubble bath. I flicked my iPad on to enjoy a little mindless internet browsing and tried to ignore the fact that I could feel my vagina sweating.
I sat like that for 25 minutes, and it was honestly very relaxing. A woman needs to spend quality time with her vagina every now and again, and this was an entirely agreeable way to do so.
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When I eventually arose, I peered into the mixing bowl to see if I had "dislodged" anything into the water below. It was difficult to tell, because the herbs and hot water looked just as disgusting as before. But I felt great: clean, relaxed, at ease. Was I more relaxed than, say, after taking a hot bath? Hard to say. Had I gained psychic powers? It didn't seem like it (still waiting to see, though). Did I feel cleansed from whatever was building up inside my reproductive organs? Again, I'm not sure. The steam certainly felt nice, but as for restoring my vaginal health, that might just be a bunch of hot air.
Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.
Video Games Helped Me Say Goodbye To My Father
A few days before my dad died in August, I got the call I'd been dreading from my mother. She told me it was time to come home for my dad's last days. I live in California, and they live in Alabama. I packed up my PS4, super slim PS3 and PS Vita—alas, my desktop PC was too big—and made the journey.
Tying The Room Together: A Millennium Falcon Area Rug
Cremation Urns Replicate The Deceased As Action Figures
Dance MagersNew funeral plans
If you have any doubt that 3D printing is a transformative technology, then look no further than the cremation industry where companies can rapidly customize urns designed to be enduring keepsakes. But, one Vermont company has gone to the extreme by duplicating your loved one's head for urns shaped as action figures.
Kirk Cameron's Attempt to Game Rotten Tomatoes Backfired Spectacularly
Kirk Cameron—holy moron , village idiot , bigot in pilgrim's clothing —is losing his battle to save Christmas from the gays or whatever, and he's blaming the critics.
Lettuce Sleep In Peace: The Cheeseburger Bedding Set
Dance MagersRich, we need to get these for our wives.
The Man Who Hears Wi-Fi Signals Wherever He Goes
Dance MagersWhoa, weird.
Hadouken!: Street Fighter Ugly Christmas Sweater
Dance MagersWhoa
Sharks And Cats Combine To Form The Most Adorably Terrifying Creatures
Having A Great Time: 3 Grandmas Get High For The First Time, Play Cards Against Humanity
Dance MagersPretty funny
Very Important Star Wars Correction In Newspaper
Woopsie: Girl Twerks It So Hard She Craps Her Pants
Holy Record Pressing Batman, it's a Bat-logo-shaped Vinyl!
Dance MagersJohn
After a series of smaller, character-themed Vinyl records based on Batman The Animated Series earlier this year, the fine folks over at Mondo are back with an even fancier Vinyl record inspired by the Dark Knight - cut into the shape of the Bat Emblem.
Behold The Terrifying Real-Life South Park From Last Night's Episode
The Film That Made Me... : 'The Human Centipede 2' Is the Film That Made Me Love Life
Dance MagersRich, we need to get on this.
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Emerging in 2011 from the warped and squalid imagination of Tom Six, The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence is a monstrosity that takes to exorbitant extremes the depravity of its predecessor. If this film is about anything, it's about what it feels like to have your face stapled to the ass of a stranger—a stranger who releases heroic quantities of shit into your unwilling mouth.
The film zooms in on Martin Lomax, a—let's not mince words—middle-aged, near-mute, asthmatic loser who lives with his dickhead of a mom and feeds live insects to his pet centipede while saying "Eeeeeee." It's self-referential from start to finish. Martin is fixated with the first of the Human Centipede franchise, and as we begin, he is watching it end.
Like most of us, no doubt, Martin is inspired by the idea that it might be possible to create one of these human centipedes by attaching a line of people "ass to mouth," thereby creating one united digestive system. Unlike many of us however—though I can't speak for everyone—the thought makes Martin so excited that he masturbates with sandpaper.
I have The Human Centipede 2 playing on Netflix as I type this—a terrifying prospect, which, as you will probably now understand, means I am plagued by an unsettling feeling like knowing that one of your nails needs to be taken off sickeningly close to the root. And yet, in a perverse way, part of me can't help but feel a strange quiver of anticipation.
I watch aghast as Martin crowbars his way through victims, keeping them in a warehouse, bound and naked. He proceeds to sever knee tendons (you see all of this), hammer out teeth (you see all of this), and staple unwilling mouths to asses (hi there) until, literally crying with joy, he has orchestrated the most depressing conga line you've ever seen in your life.
Injecting his ten victims with laxative, he watches as each of them unleashes the contents of their bowels into the mouth of the person behind, who then does the same to the person behind, etc. etc. This is the film for which the phrase ad nauseam was invented.
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I'm not a horror devotee. And as far as gore goes, I've seen about five of the Saw films—but once you've survived The Human Centipede 2 that's like boasting that you've watched every episode of Ready Steady Cook, only it is unbelievably difficult to watch, offensively realistic, and set (mercifully) in black and white—well, not entirely; Six chooses to splatter the screen with brown at the appropriate moments, don't you worry.
The first time I watched The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence was in the fateful summer of 2012. I was staying with my best friend, who was to get married that week. The pair of us had spent a while watching episodes of An Idiot Abroad but, as everyone is always saying, what you really want to experience in the days before your wedding is a film about stapling lips to bums. Something old, something new, something borrowed, The Human Centipede 2.
Watching the film came about as a kind of dare. Initially it's just a laugh, talking about movies that are infamously disgusting or frightening; you hear them described and their horrors live in the abstract, not vivid enough to leave an imprint. My best friend and I had no real idea how nauseating the film would be; we were young and, hey, bloody heck, we were foolish. If we could have seen into the future, we would not have wanted to grimace and gurn our way through the poo-stained gore-fest. But grimace and gurn we did.
In the spirit of learning from your experiences, I can—with hindsight—tell you that the most disgusting film ever made is worth seeing for your own personal development. Given that the British Board of Film Classification said that the film posed "a real risk that harm is likely to be caused to potential viewers," you're probably going to want to see it. Here's why you should.
It is not a good film. It is a woeful film. It is 86 minutes of shit, screams, and blood. But The Human Centipede 2 made me glad to be alive. Before I had seen it my world was carefree and virgin-white by comparison. You know the expression "You don't know what you've got till it's gone?" Well, I can tell you, you don't know what you've got till you've seen a bald man rip his stapled, excrement-stained face from the anus of an incontinent stranger.
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What The Human Centipede 2 does is make your life seem wonderful by comparison—in terms of both its premise and its production. However much my parents might inwardly wish I had chosen a different career path, I am always cheered by the thought of Tom Six having a monthly dinner with his mom and dad, who ask him what he's been up to recently.
TOM: Oh, not much. Still makin' those movies.
PAPA SIX: Well, if that's what makes you happy.
MAMA SIX: Can you pass the gravy, honey?
PAPA SIX: What have you been working on?
TOM: You know, this one's actually about an obese, bulbous-eyed reject who attaches ten people together by stapling them face to ass. Then he injects them with laxatives and watches as they're forced to eat the explosive shit of the person in front. One of them shoves a live centipede up the man's rectum.
PAPA SIX: Oh for fuck's sake.
MAMA SIX: Tom, what is it with you and asses?
A word so often associated with film is escapism: We go to the cinema to forget ourselves. In Brad Pitt we see the man we wish we were; we imagine in startling detail Scarlett Johansson giving us a sponge bath. A trip to the pictures is an evening lived vicariously: We wish we could rob banks, we wish we could deck enemies with one punch, we wish we could stroll into a bar and say, "Hey Jack, just my usual." Horror films are a sick visitor in this fantasy; why do we wish to force such distress upon ourselves?
The Human Centipede 2 is escapism of a different kind. What its grim, almost unbearable torture does is enable you to actually appreciate everything in your gorgeous life: colors are brighter; your other half is more angelic; the fact that you're not having your tongue ripped out with pliers is cause for celebration. Whereas George Clooney's latest film leaves you blinking into the real world feeling angry that you're not George Clooney, The Human Centipede 2 leaves you ecstatic that you have all your limbs and aren't being fucked by a man who looks like Gollum spent the last 30 years in a fudge shop.
If I am in need of cheering up, I have only to think of the film and I will get a boost from the knowledge that my life is nowhere near as shudderingly depressing. Further to this, it has the ability to empower: once you have endured The Human Centipede 2, you can face anything. I think I could become a surgeon after watching it. Bring on the gore. Bring on the bones. Nothing you can do will hurt me. I have walked into Hell and it's the color of shit.
The Human Centipede 2 is haunting; over the last two years I have found it truly difficult to shake off. This is why it is so repulsive and why having watched it is important. If a film leaves its fingerprints on your brain, it is telling you something. This may not have been its intention, but The Human Centipede 2 tells you that your life is good. Don't worry. Things are OK. They cannot possibly be as bad as they are for any of the people in the film, nor can your mind be as fucked as the one that made it.
The Man Who Does The Impossible in Super Mario 64
Dance MagersHoly shit this is insane.
Build a solar power plant to help run a water treatment plant! [Greg Laden's Blog]
Dance MagersHuh, apparantley we're doing something cool in Rockford.
RMU Announces Solar Plant Completion
Rochelle Municipal Utilities, in Rochelle, Illinois, has. started operation of a large Photovoltaic Solar Plant providing power to their water treatment facility. This is a great example of a project that should be done in more places.
In the Spring of 2014, RMU was awarded a $500,000 grant from the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation to fund construction of the Solar Plant. ICECF provides grants for up to $2/watt or 60% of the system and its installation costs, whichever is less. As a result of the competitive bidding process, Eagle Point Solar was awarded the project.
“Rochelle’s 312 kW Solar Photovoltaic plant is one of the larger Public Power Utility owned plants in Illinois. This plant will provide renewable energy to the water treatment plant” stated Business & Financial Analyst Dan Westin. “Treatment plants require a lot of energy to make clean water. Rochelle will continue to explore financially sound projects in the area of renewable energy.”
As a result of this project, Rochelle Municipal Utilities has been selected as a recipient of this year’s Northern Illinois Renewable Energy Summit & Expo’s “Leadership by Example” award.
You can view the plant’s output real time here.
The water treatment plant has a peak energy demand of about 420 kW and the PV system can cover over half of that. During summer months, when the Sun’s energy is maximally available, the sun will provide about 45% of the plant’s energy requirements. It helps that the plant operates mainly during daylight hours, so this is a good fit for a solar installation.
According to Dan Westin, of Rochelle Municipal Utilities, “the unique part of Rochelle is that as a Muni owned utility it can include the grid capacity cost savings in the business case as well the solar energy credits marketed in the Pennsylvania market. The payback is less than five years that way. So 15 years of free solar energy. The cost of producing clean water goes down.”
Dan also told me that there are similar projects in Galena and Rockford Illinois.