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BREAKING: Puns save men from spontaneously turning into women

It’s true! A whole dialect has emerged to protect men from jokes, suspicious stares and questions about their manhood. There’s murse, instead of nurse. Mandals, not sandals. Guyliner, not eyeliner (see the glossary for further explanation). And ever since Britney Spears hired a male nanny, tabloids, TV shows, and even the Washington Post have been abuzz about mannies. “The man part of these words is designed to reassure men that they won’t lose their largely…

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Judge this book by its cover

Frederick S. Lane was on The Daily Show last night hawking his book The Decency Wars. I haven’t read the book, and probably won’t until it’s out in paperback, so I can’t comment on its content. But I would like to poll the audience. Based on what the book is ostensibly about, what do you make of this, the cover? Interesting that breasts are shorthand for indecency. Or, I guess, shorthand for sex, which is…

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There’s something to this collective consciousness thing

Today the lede story on my metro front was about Eudora Baptist Church being on the verge of partial demolition and renovation (I’ll link when we go live). And, as my mind is pretty much a rickety hamster wheel that keeps turning even when no rodents are running on it, throughout the night the words “Eudora Welty” flickered in my head even though Eudora Baptist has nothing to do with Welty, the writer. So at…

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Thankful Thursday: Retro Edition

I’ve never done a Thankful Thursday before, but I’ve seen it around at other blogs and I say it’s about time I ponied up my own slice of gratefulness. I’m thankful for: • a car that works• a good job and a steady paycheck• the ability to see color• air conditioning• good parents• funny friends• the windows at work• free time• options• the option key on my keyboard, which lets me make bullets• the vet…

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Drunk dial Dan Savage!

There’s a certain Middle Tennessean-turned-New Yorker who occasionally leaves long, rambling, booze-and-drugs-fueled messages on my voice mail regarding existential crises, and, while I get an infinite kick out of hearing these messages and coming up with wholly inappropriate advice for the aforementioned existential crises, I’m thinking this Middle Tennessean-turned-New Yorker might actually get some usable advice from dearest Dan Savage, who is now taking phone calls for his upcoming podcasts.

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Please hold off on your proposals

Forbes said you shouldn’t marry me. Shocker, right? People like me make fabulous Susie Homemakers! But Forbes says you men should steer clear of a woman who has “a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than $30,000 a year.” By all means, that sounds like a brilliant plan for lifelong happiness. Why? If a host of studies are to be believed, marrying these women…

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Open letter to the person who cleaned up the laundry room

My sincerest thanks for the excellent job you did clearing off the folding table and taking out the trash, which probably hadn’t been emptied in months and was overflowing with lint balls and innumerable grains of washing powder and gooey bottles of liquid detergent and the occasional ripped sock. But did you have to throw out the rest of my detergent and dryer sheets? I mean, both were running a little low, but I guess…

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Life in two completely different universes

There’s this. Bush has virtually never in his political career made a decision that he didn’t think was the right thing to do and the right way to do it. Conservatives who are piling on the anti-Bush bandwagon should consider that this trait—which makes the Bush family historically great—is a historical rarity to be treasured. This administration would do well to be more concerned with its popularity — the President and even Vice President should…

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