Britney Spears is now an international icon for unplanned parenthood. It just goes to show… no amount of money or success can buy brains, which is sad but sort of comforting at the same time.
Bonus link: the Britney archive at Go Fug Yourself, my favorite guilty pleasure.
What’s worse than being stuck on an extended deployment in Iraq? Finally getting home to re-start your life, and then being told “nevermind!”
About 300 U.S. soldiers who just weeks ago returned home to Alaska after a year in Iraq are being ordered back to try to help bolster security in Baghdad, the U.S. Army said on Monday.
…
The brigade was so far along in the process of flowing out of Iraq after its yearlong tour that 380 soldiers had returned home to Alaska and 300 had arrived in Kuwait en route home, the Army said.
– Reuters AlertNet – US sending 300 newly returned troops back to Iraq
Rinse and repeat. In just a few short years we’ll have a population of trained killers, who’ve been emotionally and physically tormented by the Pentagon, back in the US with only a vague memory of what it felt like to be human.
This photo on Yahoo just reminded me of a great idea I had in the shower this morning. Last week I came across two different pictures of pregnant bellies beautifully decorated with henna. I thought that looked like something I would love to do myself. (…When I get pregnant – not yet!)
But I’m afraid I won’t be able to find any talented henna artists. I think an easy and fun substitute would be fake tattoos! Wouldn’t that be fun? You’ve got this big belly hanging around, full of potential, why not celebrate and decorate it? Plus it would give me something to look at and smile about while in that 17th hours of labor.
So please send me links of you know of anyone selling prenatal temporary tattoos. If not, go ahead and take my idea and make some money. (And please send me some fun tattoos.)
If you use AirTunes, don’t walk – run – to http://RogueAmoeba.com and download AirFoil right now. This $25 application liberates that handy little Airport Express from iTunes slavery and lets it play music from any application on your computer!
I have been needing something just like this for months. I would have paid twice the price for something that works this well. (But don’t tell Rogue Amoeba that – they make tons of great, cheap Mac applications. (They do Windows too, but who cares?))
Bonus audio-related link: FrequeNC has tons of free MP3s of interesting local (Chapel Hill) bands. Enjoy!
As you may know, one of my favorite things to do is give advice. Fortunately for me the Internets were made for this kind of thing. 😉 The latest in such Q&A websites is http://DearInter.net (“consensus life coaching”) which was co-created by the son of the brilliant, genius, amazing author Neil Gaiman.
So far I like this new site better than http://Wondir.com, which aims to do pretty much the same thing. Interestingly (or maybe not), the son of my friend and favorite humorist-marketer-geek-protoblogger (and good wedding photographer) Doc Searls was involved with starting Wondir. Do we detect a theme? Sons of smart men looking to strangers for advice? Nah.
http://DearInter.net is way more lightweight than http://Wondir.com, but as a result is easier and fun to use. Witness: the answer-o-matic.
South by Southwest is inviting folks to help them select the panels for their 2007 Interactive conference. I put in two proposals: “If All Politics is Local, Why Are you Still Reading DailyKOS?” and “Advocacy 2.0: Movement-building in the Age of Connectivity” (featuring Marty Kearns). Both are listed in the politics/social activism category. There are 173 proposals so I recommend using categories to navigate, even though they are kind of silly.
Offical announcement from the wonderful and talented Hugh Forrest after the jump…
Matt Doherty (UNC basketball player 1980-84 and coach 2000-03) has a new job coaching at Southern Methodist University and a new blog!
Watching three games is too much. Can’t do it. Therefore, I will try to get a chair between both courts and look at the “A” court first and during dead balls, study the “B” court. One time I was in LA looking at a 7 footer named Chad Bell on my “A” court. During dead balls I looked at court “B”. As I was looking at court “B” I saw this kid flying all over the court. He would steal the ball and lay it up, time and time again. At half time I learned that the team on court “B” was from South Carolina. I then turned my chair and flipped courts, making court “B” my “A” court and “A” my “B”. After the game I found out that the little jet on court”B” was Raymond Felton! Eight months later Raymond commited to me at UNC and three years later he lead the Tar Heels to the NCAA Championship!
– SMUMUSTANGS.COM
I love it. Um… go you Mustangs?
Thanks to Ed Cone for the link.
OK, we’re back! And (ug) back at work.
I kept having ideas I wanted to blog during the honeymoon, but instead I took pictures and uploaded them to Flickr.com every few days. So here is the long version of my photo blog of the trip. (I hope to whittle it down to a greatest hits, but this will do for now.) Brian’s not finished posting his photos, but you can see his honeymoon-tagged photos as they come.
And of course everyone’s wedding photos to date are collected under the brianandruby tag. Enjoy!
As some people have noticed, Brian and I got married last weekend. A lot of people said it was one of the most fun and meaningful weddings they have ever attended – I hope this is an indicator of what our marriage will be like, too. 🙂
Now we’re off to our honeymoon in Merida, an historic capital city on the northeast part of the Yucatan peninsula. Looks like the weather will be about the same as home:
The things I am most excited about are visiting the ruins at Uxmal, consuming mass quantities of guacamole and margaritas and some Yucatecan delights, and lounging on my butt in this funky little hotel. We may or may not blog from Mexico, but there will definitely be many pictures to post upon our return. Meanwhile, enjoy copious (and growing) wedding pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/brianandruby
My boss Marty, who is a great communicator himself, read this article by the lingust George Lakoff on The Framing of Immigration, and came up with this great redux:
1. The US is dealing with an “Economic Refugee Crisis” that is pushing 800,000 people a year across our borders.
2. We are dealing with a humanitarian crisis that pushes good hardworking families to be separated and hundreds to die on a trek to earn a living wage.
3. We need Foreign Policy Reform that cuts support for corrupt governments and dysfunctional banking systems that bleed hard working and sacrificing people from developing countries. We need offer people freedom to follow jobs now that we have mutli-national corporations and trade agreements that are so fluid with capital and assets. Companies have more freedom and choices than the people.
4. We need to reaffirm the core American stand of birthright citizenship before small minded nationalists with fear of diversity attack another one of our core building rights in this nation. (I am the grandson of an economic immigrant from Ireland and I know they tried every trick possible to suppress the Irish too). Born in America is the test of American citizenship.
5. It is an economic crisis, fueled by American choices toward cheap labor. American consumers and businesses pay low wages to provide the crap served out at WalMart and McDonalds. As long as our country continues to do anything and everything to “save a buck” regardless of the human cost we will continue to have economic pressures to hire refugees.
– Network-Centric Advocacy: The Framing of Immigration: Economic Refugee Crisis