It Never Rests

"It" being my starred file. I just can't stop starring things even though Google has tried to make the star as hard to find as the rest of the site is hard to read. People, y'all need to quit redesigning shit that works fine. I don't use y'all lightly. It conveys deep disappointment in your commitment to the greater good. Also gravy. Y'all is all about gravy.

(OK, I'll say it, "and good gravy does your new look for reader and mail suck!")

The Awesome Amber, who I had dinner with just a short time ago, made a very cool gift guide. Items 2, 7, & 9 would certainly look as good on me as they will on her!

Amber also linked to Lisa Congdon's blog and I starred that entry for 2 reasons. 1. Lisa was celebrating 4 years with her rescued chill chihuahua and 2. I really enjoy Lisa's art.

If you're looking for gifts that also give back Chookooloonks, aka Karen Walrond, made a gift guide for that.

Ari at Advanced Style explained how he responds when he stops a stylish subject for a photo and she replies, "But I'm an Old Lady." Just look at the woman's eyes in that post. Gorgeous!

I defy you to look at the top photo of these dogs who need to be adopted together and not promptly melt.

I probably tell you to go read Seth's blog a lot but it's only because you're not commenting on the blog so I can't prove that you're reading. I want you to read so you can laugh. You like laughing, don't you? In this recent entry I want you to note the bit about the Perry-Romney bet. Better to laugh than to cry. Right? Right?!

If you lived in DC and took the metro you had a chance to hear a world famous violinist play for free. Most people didn't think it was all that or a bag of chips. Or maybe they just didn't notice. On the flip side a pay-what-you-can restaurant in NYC opened as a one month experiment and is doing well enough to continue. So, I don't know how people operate.

Former TV star and recovering anorexic Tracy Gold is apparently hosting a reality show called Starving Secrets. Blogher ran a post asking whether readers thought the show was helping or hurting the participants and eating disordered viewers. I think the same question might be posed for any of the reality shows from HGTV to NBC and everywhere in between. What do you think?

I don't know if you caught this but this week the FDA approved emergency contraceptive Plan B for sale without a prescription. In an unprecedented move HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the FDA scientists so it will not be available without prescription. Both Sebelius announcement of the decision and President Obama's endorsement of it took a paternalistic approach using a mythical 11-year-old consumer as the basis for the decision. On the plus side 14 senators, including my own state's Kirsten Gillibrand, are demanding that Sebelius explain what medical and scientific evidence she is using for this decision. Good on all 14 of them and anyone else using one set of rules for all genders.

And on that same topic from my newest blog crush, Lindsay, please read this concise rundown of what the ruling seems to be telling us. It's along the lines of "we'll support you in keeping that baby right up until the time you birth it" but it's even more pointed.

Also from Lindsay are a couple of short paragraphs from a ceremony presided over by Rick Perry where he handed down the first posthumous pardon of a death penalty inmate. I'm sure that inmate is grateful, wherever the afterlife took him.*

Brokelyn is doing a gift guide for things under $25. Did you know they make a kit for ice cube Titanics and icebergs? Now you do!

Another reason I have trouble psyching myself up for the nightlife and dating scene is that people are insane and I tend to attract them. I feel fortunate that I wasn't the one who told this guy to please leave me alone. Usually I don't say please. I can only imagine how he would have reacted to that.

On a disturbingly similar note it seems that Michele Bachmann's daughters aren't allowed to ask boys out. They can go out with them, they just can't do the asking. But she wants to break a big old stereotype and be president of the United States.

Whew! I had to scroll a looooong way down to come to an entry that would allow us to end on an upbeat note. Check out these beautifully stylish yet practical canes. Eventually we're all going to need one, if only for a short time, it'd be nice to get one that made us feel good about using it. I have toted plenty of necessary but unnecessarily ugly canes for friends and loved ones. It's good to know there's an alternative now.

*Oh my god the death penalty system does not fucking work you godforsaken MORONS!