Happy Birthday Grace and Noah! It's unpossible you're two years old!

I'm not a bath person, either. I get bored. (Don't suggest I take a book in with me. You're talking to a librarian who knows what book mold is, and does. Not going to risk introducing it to my shelves.)

I once took all my mother's old saved fancy soaps. I didn't have to buy soap for about two years. Now I can't use anything with plant ingrediants (I only use Ivory soap), so I only buy yummy smelling soaps to put in plastic bins with my yarn.

I had to tape over the overflow thingie to make my bathwater deep enough.

I like hot baths - they're a good way of helping me get to sleep when I have insomnia.

cereal:

Julie - our police precinct used to have a noise complaint line, check online, otherwise I would call the precint direct #, NOT 911.

Unless the door's locked, I'd just go inside.

Shir, really? into a neighbor's place? No way, no how - 1) illegal, yes? 2) I'd fear violence.

Bookstore porn: [link] (with a special bonus for tommyrot!)

(with a special bonus for tommyrot!)

Awwww... it sounds like that cat is more famous that his bookstore home.

"Honor killings" just make me so angry....

'Honor Killings' Have Morphed Into 'Honor Suicides' in Turkey

When Elif's father told her she had to kill herself in order to spare him from a prison sentence for her murder, she considered it long and hard. "I loved my father so much, I was ready to commit suicide for him even though I hadn't done anything wrong," the 18-year-old said. "But I just couldn't go through with it. I love life too much."

All Elif had done was simply decline the offer of an arranged marriage with an older man, telling her parents she wanted to continue her education. That act of disobedience was seen as bringing dishonour on her whole family - a crime punishable by death. "I managed to escape. When I was at school, a few girls I knew were killed by their families in the name of honour - one of them for simply receiving a text message from a boy," Elif said.

So-called "honour killings" in Turkey have reached record levels. According to government figures, there are more than 200 a year - half of all the murders committed in the country. Now, in a sinister twist, comes the emergence of "honour suicides". The growing phenomenon has been linked to reforms to Turkey's penal code in 2005. That introduced mandatory life sentences for honour killers, whereas in the past, killers could receive a reduced sentence claiming provocation. Soon after the law was passed, the numbers of female suicides started to rocket.

...

A woman's fate is usually decided during a "family council", when the extended family meets to discuss breaches of honour. In these meetings, it is agreed how the victim must be killed. If it is not to be a forced suicide, a killer is chosen. The youngest member of the family is often ordered to kill, in the belief they will be treated more leniently if caught.

Mehmet was 17 when he was handed a gun and told he would have to kill his stepmother and her lover. "I didn't want to do it. I was so young and so scared," he said. Mehmet ran away, but his family tracked him down and warned him his own life would be in danger if he refused to kill.

He shot dead his stepmother's lover, but his stepmother survived the attack. He was given a two-and-a-half- year prison sentence.

People suck.

Anyone have any experience with on-demand water heaters?

When our last water heater failed we looked at getting one (a gas model), but it was just so expensive compared to a tank that we passed.

Surfing cat: [link]

Boomer Hodel, 14, has trained his two white rats to surf on custom-built 1ft long boards. By Clark Little.

Surfing squirrel: [link]

Surfing elephant: [link] Note chains holding elephant to its board.

Artist paints herself having sex with each president of the USA

Artist Justine Lai's new project is a set of oil paintings of her having sex with every president of the USA, in order.

In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order. I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated.

I approach the spectacle of sex and politics with a certain playfulness. It would be easy to let the images slide into territory that's strictly pornographic—the lurid and hardcore, the predictably "controversial." One could also imagine a series preoccupied with wearing its "Fuck the Man" symbolism on its sleeve. But I wish to move beyond these things and make something playful and tender and maybe a little ambiguous, but exuberantly so. This, I feel, is the most humanizing act I can do.

Worksafe. If you follow the link to her site, it's NSFW.