OMFG OMFG OMFG

Too many quotes to select a favorite.

Don't drink the water.

What's up with the small people in India lately? Yesterday two people were in the news. First, there was Aditya "Romeo" Dev, a 2'9" bodybuilder.

And then there was Jyoti Amge, a 1'11'' teenager.

And I think we all remember Lil' Superstar.

Seriously...don't drink it.

There was also a two-faced baby girl in the news yesterday!

And back in November there was Lakshmi Tatma, the 4-legged, 4-armed girl.

These seem to be more like conjoined twin situations, but isn't that just an extreme end of the continuum, the other end of which contains teratomas? Let's talk about teratomas. Those are the things that result when an embryo starts growing within its twin but then dies, causing the remaining twin to later have a tumor with hair, teeth, nails, bones, and sometimes even hands or eyeballs. And they can keep growing so that people don't really notice them until adulthood. It's all so gross and fascinating. Bodies are crazy. I love this stuff. If you have teratoma stories, pass them this way.

Horse Singles

I stumbled across a website called Horse Singles the other day. Whoa. At first I chuckled and pictured Amy Poehler and Will Ferrell doing a great SNL skit, but then the sweetness and earnesty kinda won me over.


Horse and Country Singles
Motto: Love, date, or just...SHARE THE PASSION!

About: Horse and country singles is the international community for lovers of the equestrian and countryside lifestyle. It’s a place where single horse lovers, single farmers, cowboys, cowgirls and rural singles meet.

Testimonial: "I have found a gorgeous horsey man on your fabulous site!"

Equestrian Singles
Motto: The #1 Online Equestrian Community

About: ...to to find roping partners, share their love of rodeo, polo, horse racing, barrel racing, dressage, hunter jumper, endurance, breeding, cutting, reining, team roping, cowboy mounted shooting, cowboy action shooting...the list is endless...If you are a cowboy cowgirl trying to find that western match, dates that form romantic relationships, meet life partners, or find American cowboy, Canadian cowboy, Canadian cowgirls, American cowgirls, single farmers, or farmers only.

Testimonial: "OVER A YEAR I HAD PRAYED THAT IF GOD WANTED ME TO HAVE A MATE HE WOULD PUT HER IN FRONT OF ME. I OWN A HORSE RANCH IN ALABAMA AND I AM VERY CLOSE TO MY FAMILY. MY GRANDAUGHTERS BARREL RACE AND I GO TO ALL THEIR EVENTS. ON MAY 10 MY SON GAVE ME AN AD FOR EQUESATRIAN SINGLES AND SAID DAD, YOU NEED TO JOIN THIS. I JOINED LATER THAT EVENING. THE NEXT DAY, MAY 11, MY PRAYER WAS ANSWERED IN A SHORT E- MAIL FROM ARIZONA. IT SIMPLY SAID "HI THERE FROM ARIZONA, I LIKE YOUR PROFILE AND LUST FOR LIFE." GOD HAD PUT THE PERFECT LADY IN FRONT OF ME. I ANSWERED THAT E-MAIL AND SHORTLY WE WERE SPENDING HOURS DAILY ON THE PHONE. WE HAVE TALKED DAILY FOR HOURS AND IN EVERY WAY SHE IS MY SOUL MATE (A PHRASE I HAD HEARD BUT QUESTIONED)SHE IS THE ANSWER TO MY PRAYER YET FAR BEYOND MY FONDEST DREAM FOR A PARTNER. THE POSSIBILITY OF US FINDING EACH OTHER WAS SO REMOTE THAT WE KNOW IT WAS PLANNED BY OUR MASTER. I HAD NO IDEA THAT THIS SITE EXISTED, MY SON AND PARTNER IN THE RANCH TOLD ME TO JOIN. SHE HAD NOT BEEN ON THE SITE FOR WEEKS BUT RECIEVED AN E-MAIL FROM SOMEONE ELSE THAT DAY. AFTER READING THE E-MAIL SHA DECIDED TO SEE WHO WAS NEW, MY PHOTO CAME UP FIRST. SHE WROTE, AND THE REST IS HISTORY.TUESDAY, JUNE 5, I WILL FLY TO ARIZONA TO BE WITH MY SOUL MATE, MY LOVE , MY EVERYTHING."

Equestrian Cupid
Motto: Where equestrian friends and singles feel at home.

About: EquestrianCupid is an exclusive community for horse lovers and equestrian singles to meet horseback riding buddies, discover uncharted trails, pursue the country lifestyle, locate the best riding areas, and meet someone to share your country pursuits.

Testimonial: "I'd reached a point in my life when companionship with the right person seemed out of reach, preferring solitude & the peace of my four-legged children to having company for the sake of such. Yet now, by GODs grace, I share my life with an angel from heaven above, whose qualities have not only rekindled feelings long dormant, but also has given me an entirely new outlook!! She was, is & shall always remain, a miracle long overdue & well worth waiting for!!!"

Horse Lovers Connection
Motto: Come Join The Most Active Place On The Internet Where Serious Single Cowboys, Cowgirls, And Horse People Connect.

About: You are now at a place that brings special country horse people together. A comfortable place with a down home feel where warm old fashioned friendships are born and the focus is truth, honesty and all the little things of importance that are often forgotten in this fast paced world.

Testimonial: "I found my prince charming wrapped up in a New Mexico Rancher."

You idiot.

Rush Limbaugh said:

"You have to understand the mindset of a lot of these feminists and women...These women have paid their dues. They've been married two or three times; they've had two or three abortions; they've done everything that feminism asked them to do. They have cut men out of their lives; they have devoted themselves to causes and careers. And this — the candidacy of Hillary Clinton — is the culmination of all of these women's efforts."

Jezebel commenters said:

• These women have "had two or three abortions and cut men out of their lives" because they keep meeting men like Rush.


• Why, oh why, couldn't his mother have been one of these three abortion minimum feminists?


• And ol' Rushie here has been married three times, but of course that has nothing to do with anything.


• Oh, shit, I thought I was a feminist. Time to go sign the divorce papers and get impregnated and have an abortion.


• This bloated asshole has been married (and divorced) multiple times, and was caught carrying Viagra and condoms to the Dominican Republic.

Those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush.

The Analytical Language of John Wilkins describes "a certain Chinese encyclopedia," the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which it is written that animals are divided into:

those that belong to the Emperor,
embalmed ones,
those that are trained,
suckling pigs,
mermaids,
fabulous ones,
stray dogs,
those included in the present classification,
those that tremble as if they were mad,
innumerable ones,
those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
others,
those that have just broken a flower vase,
those that from a long way off look like flies.

April Fools!!!! LOL

The folks at FamilyFun.com compiled some of the most hilarious pranks around. Too bad I didn't see this earlier, because I would've done all of them to everybody:

Call from the Principal (Not!). My kids behave pretty well at school so they were very shocked when I told them the principal had called about some rude behavior on the playground. Of course they denied it and rightly so since I'd just made it up. I told them no T.V. for a week and boy did they howl about that! Luckily they weren't mad at me when I finally said,"APRIL FOOLS!"

Buggy Toothpaste. My husband placed a raisin in the end of the toothpaste tube. When I squeezed out the paste, I got what I thought was a bug along with my minty tarter control glob.

Cowboys and Indians. I live in Cowboy country and am a huge Dallas fan. One Sunday while I was watching Dallas play our rival Washington, my kids made two big signs saying "A Redskin fan lives here" and "I love the Redskins" and placed them on our front lawn. It wasn't until later that afternoon as we backing out of the driveway to go out that I saw the signs and almost passed out!

Ran out of Gas! The set-up is simple. We took our kids out to dinner to "celebrate" April Fool's Day. A few blocks from home, my husband made the car lurch a little and announced that we were out of gas. The children moaned and groaned a little and then got out to walk home with Dad while I stayed behind with the baby and to watch the car. I watched them for about a block, started the car and drove by yelling "April Fool's!" The kids loved it and it was a great way for them to work off more energy before bed!

Finger Lickin' Good. Finishing our take-out fried chicken dinner one night, I complained I was still sooo hungry and wished there were more chicken. I drank some water, secretly sucking a half-melted ice cube into my mouth and moving it between my molars. Then, licking my finger & smiling, I stuck my finger into my mouth (between my cheek & molars where I held the ice). I bit down on my "finger," the ice cracked & crunched horribly, then I pretended to really enjoy crunching down on that chicken-lickin' finger! The looks on my kids' faces were priceless!

Tig Notaro and a Child.

From Tig Nation.

Tig Notaro

I went to An Evening of a Thousand Scowls on Saturday, which was a comedy fundraiser for 826 Valencia. One of the comics -- Tig Notaro -- was hilarious. She's like Maria Bamford and Mary Louise Parker combined. Her comedy was super dry and quiet and slow, kinda like a deadpan friend. She started her routine by quietly taking the mic off its stand, then joking about comedians that hold the stand on the diagonal or move the stand out way out of the way. Then she started to move the stand to the far edge of the stage, and then eventually she moved it off the stage into the audience because "We need to clear the stage. My comedy is too gigantic." It just got better from there. In conclusion: Highly recommended.



Bonus: Fred Willard!

The Embarrassing Daves.

When did Dave Eggers fall with Dave Matthews into the category Things Cool People Don't Like? There were times I loved both these men in earnest (2002 and 1997, respectively). But it's uncool to like them, so until today I talked about my love for Crash or A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius in self-deprecating, haha-I-was-young sort of tone. No more. I loved both those things and I don't care who knows it!

Her legs look good and stable!

A few years ago my friends and I had a night of hysterical can't-catch-our-breath laughter in which we designed imaginary satyrs (or centaurs, or fawns, or minotaurs, depending whom you ask) for each of us. Maybe you had to be there, but the topic has induced giggles for me ever since.

Recently Stephen Colbert said "I'll go on record saying John McCain is a minotaur," which caused me to shriek with delight and research which man/beast combo we really meant a few years ago. I think it was the satyr. But when googling "centaur," I found an awesome site called Elfwood, to which some dude submitted a digital painting with this note:

"the basic idea about her legs is they are actually a normal (very muscular) human legs with extended feet (those of a horse) all covered in fur, so I think she wouldn't have any trouble in walking, and keeping her balance for standing with two legs in a long time. I don't think that a person with a true horse hind legs could walk normally, because their thighs are too short so their knees are also too high, it's not easy to walk with such legs. recently I found that highlighting the skin tone with yellow looks very organic compared to white (I used to make highlight using white, and then wondered about the unhealthy pale look on the skin I just rendered, and spent so many hours to adjust the contrast, hue, and everything in a frustration) manually sketched, colored with photoshop,then rendered in painter, and exported back to photoshop for the final adjustments (ex: the make up for her face). the dress was painted from scratch in painter, and the eye glasses was made with photoshop."

This is the picture:

And these are some comments:

• I think the creature isn't a centaur, it's either a minotaur, a faun, or a satyr. Great work though!


• Aah who cares what you call her, she's gorgeous! I love the yellow skin, and her dress, and her legs look good and stable!


• She is what I call a "hemicentaur": the F1 hybrid of a non-centaur human and a centaur (this assumes incomplete dominance of the centaur gene). As your picture shows, the result is beautiful (lovely legs!). [Do you wish you were one (or ARE you one)?].


• I appreciate it more in the closeups of her head. That's when the detail in her eyes and lips comes out. It's very good, I think, very indicative of a tough but beautiful personality. She's got a tan elven ladies might kill for, too.

Mom's Corner

i fixed an awesome dinner for evelyn with poached pear/ice cream dessert, so she was very grateful and impressed. i had eva come for lunch today so we began drinking greyhounds (grapefruit juice/vodka) on the patio and playing fetch with maggie. i made scrumptious sun-dried tomato wraps with turkey, avocado, chopped butter lettuce, swiss cheese and a touch of italian dressing. eva had never had a wrap, so it was fun making her one. it was lots of fun being domestic for a couple days...[dad] has enjoyed that too, of course. i guess watching the food network channel has been inspiring me...a little bit :) tomorrow at 5 p.m. [cousins] arrive, so i've got some appetizers for them before they go back to a wedding welcoming party later in the evening.

does [brother] know you're considering a fit? [Fn1] he'd sure be excited about that, since he loves that car. will that be enough room for you? are you buying a used or new one? ouch...cars are so expensive!! good luck car shopping! here's some advice (although you haven't asked for any, ha) i recommend going through costco's auto plan, since you get the best price in town. costco has a deal with certain local honda dealers who will sell a car a few thousand $$ under the mfrp (manufacturer's retail price); it's a great deal. just get a costco store's auto plan booklet which lists the honda dealers in your area. you'll probably deal with the honda dealer's fleet manager. that person will be your only contact and he/she simply explains the plan and finalizes the paperwork for you, so there's no need to wheel 'n deal with car salesmen...nice. also, there are additional fees when buying a new car. they are: a document preparation fee ($45 for my accord), sales tax, license fees ($211 for the accord) , and california tire fees ($5 for the accord). fyi: the mfrp (window/sticker price, which includes a destination and handling fee) for the 2004 accord was $26,890.00, but the costco discount lowered it to $24,250.00!! even if you have to pay $50 to become a costco member, it's well worth it!! maybe i've given you more info than you want at this time, but you know me...always looking for better prices/deals and ALWAYS wanting to help you in any way i can!!

I LOVE YOU!!

mom

[Fn1] My car was stolen from the mean streets of Noe Valley the other week. I hated that hand-me-down '95 Civic Coupe with a cherry red paint job and many street parking scrapes and a recently developed high pitched whirring sound. I was disappointed when it was found, but happy when my insurance declared it totalled. Honda Fit, here I come! (Note to self: Learn how to buy cars.)

Welcome to my new all-video blog.

Easter in San Francisco

After the Hot Jesus contest

and before the Big Wheel race

a gentleman asked my friend Cheryl:
"Would you like some merlot and Coke? ...It's very popular in Spain."

Meet Burger and Fries.

Pinky goes nuts.

Stuff White People Like

I know you've all read and enjoyed it, so I'm not linking, but merely sharing this morning's family email dialogue:

• Brother 6:42 AM: This is hilarious. It's like an outsider's cultural guide to understanding whites (albeit whites in the upper-middle class). There has been a lot of discussion on the 'net about this lately. Apparently a lot of whites are outraged that someone would dare generalize them in this manner. I however was completely amused, and so was Linda, despite being basically the exact prototype of this classification. http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

• Mom 6:47 AM: hey brother...i'm laughing so hard i can hardly type! thanks for the morning cardiopulmonary workout while drinking coffee (#1)...instant coffee, i must admit! yup...you and linda fit into many of the stereotypes pretty closely, hmm. it's about time us parents are off the hook a little ('cept by their kids!). i guess the saying is true, "what goes around comes around." thanks a lot for sending this to us and keeping us informed about our race...i'm passing it forward!!

• Linda 9:08 AM: Whoa. Are you sure you've only had the one coffee?

• Mom 9:20 AM: one and a half actually. how about you?

• Dad 9:26 AM: Mom, put the Bushmills away. No more irish coffee for you this morning!

It destroys art. It destroys souls.

Today Gentleman Friend proudly showed me his new Anne Geddes checks. He also reminded me of this great moment from "The Office":


Angela: It makes me feel like the babies are the true artists, and God has a really cute sense of humor.


Oscar: I don't like looking at it. It's creepy and in bad taste and it's just offensive to me. It makes me think of the horrible frigid stage mothers who forced the babies into it. It's kitsch. It's the opposite of art. It destroys art. It destroys souls. This is so much more offensive to me than hardcore porno.

What to Expect When You're Expecting

Today, in response to a post about What to Expect When You're Expecting, Jezebel commenters discussed weird things that happen during pregnancy and birth. This has been a favorite topic of mine since I learned (relatively recently) that women often poop during birth. My response was basically "Hold on...WHAT?!?!"

Here are the top ten comments and tips from today's post:

(10) I was a C-section, so there was no chance for such grossness with me. Only cutting flesh open, pulling it back like wallpaper, and shifting organs about. You know. The usual.

(9) Seeing my friend's fiancee not able to get off a couch because she had an 8 inch blood clot after her c-section made me die a little inside.

(8) My friend's mom craved dirt when she was pregnant with her. Dirt. More specifically she wanted red dirt. I don't know why she was hating on the other flavors of dirt, but whatevs.

(7) I think the first truly horrifying reality check about pregnancy came the day I learned in 9th grade health class about shitting during labor, tearing, and what 10 cm dilated really looks like. It was a trifecta of horror.

(6) A guy I work with was horrified about the thing where well, they cut something (cervix, vagina, not sure?) to make the baby come out easier. He came by my desk and asked me about it (why, not sure, I have no kids) and was all pale. He told me he thought they "just fell out."

(5) What about that gross mucus plug that comes out the last few weeks?? Uggggg.

(4) Ahh me too on the shitting during labor! All I could think was - "I can't believe so many husbands have watched their wives shit, camera-in-hand!"

(3) I threw up during labor. I also got extreme "morning sickness" from the second month until the seventh month. I threw up so much and so often that I began bleeding from the back of my throat every time I gagged. Oh and my insurance wouldn't cover the cost of the anti-nausea pills. It was the worth nine months of my life, but I'm happy with the end result. He's pretty rad.

(2) When my sister was in the midst of her ninth month she sent me a text message that read, "Thought my water broke this morning, but I just peed my pants."

(1) A friend and I told a male coworker about how sometimes babies poop in the womb (I think it is called merconium?). First he didn't believe us. Then he got upset. Then he yelled at the top of his lungs "Nobody is SHITTING inside MY WIFE!"

Happy St. Patrick's Day! (v.1)