Vatican dress code swiftly owned by wise old woman

The Vatican has been cracking down on violators of their dress code. Members of the Swiss Guard have been drawing aside men in shorts and women without sleeves across the entire Vatican City State, not just St. Peter’s Basilica like usual. This would be boring news if it weren’t for the awesome quote at the end:

“Given all the scandals the Church has been involved in, what possible right can it have to be preaching about the morality of sleeveless dresses?” said one woman in her seventies.

Oooooohhhhhhhhh snap!

Just for shits and giggles, here’s a photo of my mom and me in St. Peter’s Square when we visited Italy 10 years ago. I would have been 12 in this photo:Wait…NO SLEEVES?! I didn’t realize my mother was such an infidel! How did we enter the basilica without bursting into flames?!

This is post 43 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

The meaning of life, the universe, and everything

From formspring.me: What is your theory on the meaning of life?

42

*bows*

…What, you want a real answer? Okay then. Life has no inherent meaning – it has whatever meaning we choose to give it.

*bows again*

…Alright, I really just wanted to devote the 42nd post of Blogathon to the meaning of life question because I’m a big Douglas Adams geek. Not only am I tired, but I hate answering these sort of philosophical questions when I’m awake. So I leave it to you guys:

When asked what is the meaning of life, how do you respond?

This is post 42 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Question quickfire

Twitter is down and both of my friends have left me to go to sleep. I suddenly feel very alone. In order to pretend I’m conversing with someone, time for some quick formspring.me questions!

What kind of clothing do you find sexy?

I like it when guys dress up nice. Like, snazzy button down shirt and dress pants. Maybe even a suit. Maybe even a fedora. It’s just nice to see something other than a nerdy t-shirt for a change (which is pretty much all I wear too, so nothing personal guys).

What is your favorite ice cream?

Chocolate with peanut butter swirled in. Not peanut butter cups – actual huge chunks of peanut butter. At Purdue, Silver Dipper does it best. Back in Munster, Oberweis is the definite winner.

What is your favorite video game?

I’m horrible at picking just one, so I won’t. My three favorite series are Civilization, Final Fantasy (including Tactics), and Pokemon. Yep, I like strategy games. Trust me, you don’t want me relying on reflexes. Unless you want to be entertained – in that case throw Resident Evil 4 into my hands.

Favorite album of all time?

My tastes change so frequently that my answer would change every year. The most recent album I’m obsessing over is Scissor Sister’s Night Work, which is fabulous. I’m a huge fan of the Scissor Sisters, and their new album definitely did not disappoint me. Unfortunately, I can’t same for some of the other bands I liked (I’m looking at you, The Killers).

Which do you prefer: I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant or Toddlers & Tiaras?

Toddlers & Tiaras. Both shows are horrifying, but for different reasons. When you watch T&T, you can scream at the screen and laugh at how awful some of the mothers act. It’s sad that those little girls are being forced into stupid pageants – but unlike IDKIWP, it doesn’t really affect you. I mean, have you seen IDKIWP? It’s fucking terrifying! “So, I was on the pill, and we were using condoms, and I had my period every month, and I didn’t gain weight, and I didn’t have morning sickness, and then out popped a baby!” Gaaah, what the fuck? That show should be used as a type of birth control, because you’ll be too afraid to have sex after watching it.

This is post 41 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Biology tattoos

I personally wouldn’t get a tattoo, but I can appreciate a good one – especially if they’re nerdy. Here are some of the best biology themed tattoos (most from here):

The tree of life:Darwin’s finches:Muscle anatomy:DNA:Archeopteryx:E. coli:Fig wasps:Homunculus:This is post 40 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Feminists ride a new wave – sidesaddle

1:57 am 8/1/2010

Spelios Bacoyanis, Blag Hag Staff Reporter

CHICAGO, IL – In what’s being heralded as a shocking move, the National Organization of Women (NOW) announced the end of Third Wave Feminism and the beginning of a Fourth Wave.

“It was time for a change,” said Jennifer Baumgardner, a pioneer of Third Wave Feminism and co-author of Manifesta, a leading treatise of Third Wave thought. “We just got tired of, you know, telling people that fuck-me pumps are empowering.”

Third Wave Feminism stood in stark contrast to its predecessor, Second Wave Feminism. Where the Second Wave addressed inequalities, sexuality, family, the workplace, and, perhaps most controversially, reproductive rights, Third Wave Feminism focused on sex-positivity, which gave a broader definition of what sex means and what oppression and empowerment may mean in the context of sex.

“Essentially, we just wanted to fuck and forget,” continued Baumgardner.

The next wave of feminism diverges dramatically from all previous waves of feminist theory. While gender equality remains the penumbral objective, the road to equality has a new path.

“With the economy being what it is, and the rigors of modern life being so difficult on everyone, we at NOW came to the inescapable conclusion that life before feminism was better for women,” said NOW president, Terry O’Neill. “Finding a good man to stand behind and producing him a son and heir, being soft spoken and subservient, and, most of all, staying in the house and only leaving with your husband’s permission are now the cornerstones. The Fourth Wave will empower women by alleviating them of all the bullshit one has to put up with in a modern society. If you can find a man that has a well paying job and who can provide, why not just live a comfortable life and just, you know, let him deal with it.”

O’Neill then quickly added, “Besides, it’s not that bad being second to the man of the house. You just have to remember your place sometimes.”

The evolution of Fourth Wave thought has been attributed to the success of the Twilight novels.

“While the thoughts have always been there, Twilight really opened up many women’s eyes by showing us that as independent as we want to be, we’re only worthwhile when we have an Edward to hold and love us,” Said Baumgardner. Edward, a sparkling obviously-not-gay vampire, is the love interest of the teen aged protagonist in the Twilight “saga”.

Despite the expedient move from Third to Fourth Wave, there has been very little resistance to the adoption of these new Fourth Wave Principles.

“The Third Wave had its time, but it has really started to get old.” Said Jen McCreight. “Sex is great and all, but every Third Waver knew, in their heart of hearts, that it couldn’t last. We all knew that, at some point, we were going to have to find a man to provide for us so we could just relax. We knew we had to sell out sometime.”

Added McCreight, “I just hope that there’s a sugar daddy left for me.”

This is post 39 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Well adjusted sluttiness

There is an excellent post up at Feministe on sluttiness. I don’t have much to add since I just kept going “THIS” while reading the post. Go read it right now. Emphasis mine:

I’m telling you this because sluthood saved me. Sluthood gave me the time and space to nurse a shattered heart. It gave me a place where I could exist in pieces, some of me craving touch, some of me still too tender to even expose to the light. Sluthood healed the part of me that felt my body and my desires were grotesque after two years in a libido-mismatched partnership. Now I felt hot, wanted, powerful. My desire and enthusiasm was an asset, not an unintended weapon. Even now, with more time passed, now, when I am actually ready for and wanting a more emotional connection, sluthood keeps me centered. It keeps me from confusing desire and affection with something deeper. It means I have another choice besides celibacy and settling. It means I won’t enter another committed relationship just to satisfy my basic need for sex and affection. It gives me more choices, it makes room for relationships to evolve organically, to take the shape they will before anyone defines them.

This is post 38 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

New condom released by Trojan

This is sure to be the start of a new sexual revolution:

PRINCETON, NJ—Contraceptive manufacturer Trojan unveiled its new line of “No One’s Pleasure” condoms Wednesday, the first prophylactic specifically designed to intensify sexual dissatisfaction among bitter and resentful couples.

“We’ve always offered consumers a choice when it comes to protection, and we wanted to give emotionally distant partners an option that suits their lack of intimacy,” said Jim Daniels, vice president of marketing at Trojan. “That’s why we’ve developed the only condoms clinically proven to exploit performance anxiety, heighten discomfort levels, and prolong the petty arguments that allow couples to bicker needlessly all night long.”

There’s a lot of science behind it too!While it’s a great advance it sexual technology, hopefully I’ll never have to use them.

This is post 37 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Cafeteria Judaism

This is a guest post by Mark Webster. Again. His credentials this time include being a big Jew.

There has been a lot of talk about Cafeteria Christians of late, but there has not been much talk about my people, the kings and queens of double-think: Jews.

As a background, I grew up in a mildly religious home…which was, for the most part, fueled by my own desire to be more religious. I went to Jewish overnight camp for four years and day camp for six years before. I learned how to not just read my torah portion for my bar mitzvah, but actually learned how to read torah, chant the services, and a multitude of other things that now feel highly irrelevant to life as it stands.

For Jews, it is not merely a desire to follow only the laws that make sense to us, but how to interpret the laws such that we can still live our lives with the least amount of “change.” This post will delineate a few of the more major loopholes that Jews have found over the years.

1. Shaving:

In the bible, it specifically says, “27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.” Obviously, in modern day society, not only would this interfere with eating, but make you look RIDICULOUS!!! (Like this!)

Perhaps it was obvious to modern day Jews that this was not the face that people wanted to have associated with their religion…so they made a loophole. “G-d says this is the preferred way, but this is totally a kosher way to cut your hair and not look like a disgusting troll!”

2. Food

There is an old joke that goes something like this:

A young, talented rabbinical student would leave immediately after school every single day. Not even a word, just leave as quickly as possible. The rabbi, after a few weeks of being puzzled by his best pupil’s behavior, decided to follow him. The rabbi kept as quiet as possible as he followed the young man to a McDonalds, of all places! He watched in dismay as his student entered the premises and ordered a bacon double cheeseburger! Just as the student was hungrily putting the unkosher meal to his lips, the rabbi yelled,

“For the love of god, stop!”

The pupil looked most confused, “What’s the problem, Reb Harris?”

“Are you shitting me?! Look at what you’re eating! You couldn’t possibly get any more unkosher if you tried!”

The young man thought for a second, smiled and said, “Oh, but it’s completely okay! You taught us!”

“What?!” The rabbi was furious, “I have never said anything of the sort!”

The student rebutted, “Ah, but, it was observed by a rabbi!”

~~~

I’m bothered most, I think, by this hypocrisy. I know so many Jews who, when I enter their house, they scrupulously have two sets of…well…everything. Dishes, pots, sinks, and even refrigerators—and then go out to dinner and have a cheeseburger.

What is their excuse? They aren’t at home. I think that so many people feel that the home is where sanctity is important, so they don’t feel it’s as necessary to follow this outside of their house, or perhaps, they relish the chance to eat the unkosher food outside of the home.

3. Sabbath taboos

Now we get into some of the more bizarre loopholes that I have encountered, funny, all of them surround the most holy day of the week…the shabbos (sabbath):

1. Lifting things (eruv)

In the bible, it specifically talks about not being able to carry things around on the sabbath…which would mean everything from carrying keys in your pocket to a tissue would be, well, outlawed! Which is, at least, inconvenient, and, at most, ludicrous!

But we are a crafty people, and have come up with a way around this. If you take a
piece of string, and wrap it around your neighborhood, you are free to break this law because…well, I don’t have any clue. Honestly, this one has baffled me since day one. Why does a piece of string…or a wall, for that matter (which is what the string is used to represent), prevent god from getting pissed at you?

2. Turning on and off lights (timers)

Many Jew folk I know also have their lights on timers during shabbat because there is also a prohibition for CREATING THINGS…which includes creating…and destroying light. So, as a measure for you being able to function at night without having to spend the night with the lights on, we have decided to employ the use of timers on our lights. This allows us to have the lights turn on and off at reasonable hours BY THEMSELVES so we don’t have to, which means we aren’t breaking the laws of shabbos because we didn’t do it…except…who set the timer in the first place? Why doesn’t that count?

My question is…why make the loophole in the first place? Why not just redact the laws that we find so…uh…stupid? You KNOW you aren’t going to follow the rules because they’re asinine…otherwise you wouldn’t have made the loophole to begin with!

This is post 36 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Squeamishness

From formspring.me: Is there anything you would encounter in your studies that you feel you might be squeamish about*?

There’s a reason why I’m not becoming a medical doctor. Well, one reason. I am very squeamish. I’ve always hated dissecting things in biology classes, no matter how much I logically tell myself why its worthwhile. When we had to dissect the fetal pig in AP Biology, I just drew everything while my partner gleefully ripped into our subject. Thankfully the only thing I had to dissect in college was potatoes, so I survived my lab classes.

I’m surprisingly okay with bleeding, but I hate hearing about injuries. Stories about breaking bones or destroying organs in a number of spectacular ways really freak me out. I have few stereotypically “girly” qualities, but one of them is flailing when people get graphic about medical situations. I hate being surprised by random injury photos in blogs.

And for some reason, I’m especially squeamish about wrist related injuries. I’ve never hurt my wrists, but they just seem like such a fragile part of the body. One cut and you’re doomed. A couple years ago my grandma fell and broke her wrist, and her doctor reconstructed it using cadaver bones and a giant metal contraption that stuck out of her wrist. She would gleefully come up to me, take off the clothe covering, and go “Look, I have a machine gun arm! Pew pew!”

Little did she know I already had a wrist-phobia, so seeing metal jutting out of it was not the most pleasant experience.

Do you have anything in your studies or work that make you squeamish? Or just particular things that make you squeamish in general?

*I think I may have interpreted this question too literally. Oh well, it’s late.

This is post 35 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.