Found this over on Julia Allison’s blog (huge fan of hers, as I’ve mentioned before):
And I liked it. That’s all.
[Posted by Mallory]
Monthly Archives: August 2009
no pink or blue for pop.
A couple in Sweden have decided to raise their child genderless, or in my opinion, screw up their perfectly healthy child. The couple won’t answer any gender questions pertaining to their two-year-old son or daughter, who the media is calling “Pop.”
The idea behind the genderless upbringing is that the child won’t grow up with preconceived notions of gender and won’t be pigeon-holed into acting like a boy or a girl.
I’m sorry, but there is NOTHING WRONG with having a gender. The parents are creating gender issues where there probably weren’t any in the first place.
As a parent, why would you want to do anything that might encourage this type of identity crisis and bring about certain ridicule from peers on your own child? Isn’t adolescence difficult enough already? The parents claim that Pop will be able to choose his/her own gender whenever he/she feels it is the right time. Pop, for your own sake, I hope it’s soon.
Read for yourself over at The Local.
[Posted by Shannon]
Filed under babies, definitely not politics, family, health, news, pop culture, rando, random, thoughts, weird
hump day cry face meets squirrelizer.
In honor of the world’s best Cry Face Ambassador and the world’s most famous squirrel, I present to you this week’s HDCF:
Squirrelize your own image here, and good luck getting through the rest of your Wednesday!
[Posted by Mallory]
let the lady show some leg!
People want a White House that isn’t stuffy and a president they can have a beer with, yet when the first lady dresses like a normal woman on vacation, the media screams “totes inappropes, Meesh!” Or something to that effect.
As you probably already heard, some people are hassling my girl Michelle for wearing shorts and showing her stems as she stepped off Air Force One. They call her shorts “short shorts” and “disrespectful” and BLAH BLAH BLAH. This issue really resonates with your Six Words bloggers, as both of us have been blessed with long femurs.
These are the shorts in question:
Ummm… they look fine to me. These are “short shorts”:
Not the same, are they?
Our lovely and stylish First Lady is model height. She’s 5’11. She’s going to have some lengthy gams. So really, her shorts aren’t that short, her legs are just really long. So lay off, you raging heightists!
Aren’t there bigger and better things to worry about anyway? You know, like making sure the Republicans stop lying about health care reform. Just a thought.
[Posted by Kathleen]
Filed under blogging, celebrities, crushes, family, fashion, news, politics, pop culture, random, thoughts
all grown up and buying domains.
Readers, we’ve gone legitimate! That’s right, SWTCTW now has its very own domain name. We are free of the shackles of the unwieldy .wordpress! HOORAY! Visit us now at www.sixwordstochangetheworld.com. (Don’t worry, www.sixwordstochangetheworld.wordpress.com will still work, but that’s just SO much typing.)
[Posted by Mallory and Kathleen]
Filed under blogging, news, six word memoirs
and i need you now tonight.
This is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen on the Internets:
For a better understanding of “Total Eclipse of the Heart”:
Thank you, Koufukuron. Click here for a larger, easier-to-read version.
True story: at my high school, seniors were allowed to go off campus for lunch. When you drove back into campus from your sweet ass lunch at Quizno’s or the cheap Mexican place, you would drive by all of the lowly underclassmen eating outside. Most seniors would take this opportunity to blare some sort of rap muuuuusick (what was popular then? Usher? Outkast?) and my friends and I vowed that we would never be that obnoxious (or at least not that particular brand of obnoxious). Instead, we would blare ridiculous, embarrassing music, like — you guessed it — Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Those were the days.
Let’s all reminisce, shall we?
Or check out the literal video version, because it’s amazing.
[Posted by Mallory]
Filed under adventures, humor, music, YouTube
study proves gamer stereotypes are true.
This just in from the Department of Things that are Unsurprising: A new survey shows that the average U.S. gamer is overweight, 35 years old and depressed.
This study was conducted by the CDC in the Seattle-Tacoma area. CDC’s Dr. James B. Weaver said,
“Health risk factors, specifically a higher BMI and a larger number of poor mental-health days, differentiated adult video-game players from non-gamers,” he said. “Video game players also reported lower extraversion [sic], consistent with research on adolescents that linked video-game playing to a sedentary lifestyle and overweight status.”
Image from vortexgames.com
Does anyone else find this to be really disturbing?
Last weekend I was in Indianapolis for a wedding, which fell on the same weekend as Gen Con Indy– a gaming convention. Walking around, our high heels and party dresses were a stark contrast to the sea of gamer costumes: elves, pirates, warrior princesses. Not to go all Carrie from Sex and the City on you, but I couldn’t help but wonder–besides the costumes, what is it about gamers that really sets them apart from the rest of us?
While we non-gamers are surely not to blame for the natural chemical imbalances that lead to depression, what is our role in ostracizing gamers from mainstream society?
Perhaps we lack the imaginative spark they manage to hold on to, and we mock them for it. That being said, there must be another outlet for imagination and creativity besides a video game.
We all understand what it’s like to feel comfortable in a community of like-minded people. (My comfort zone is other political wonks and campaigners who, to some, may seem like weirdos. Unlike gamers, however, we tend to be painfully extroverted. It takes a certain kind of person to actually like knocking on doors and talking to strangers.) And if the study had said the average gamers were mostly happy and healthy, I would say “live and let live” and then make a crack about how they probably still live in their parents’ basement.
But that isn’t the case. We now have data pinpointing a distinct community of people who are depressed and unhealthy. Now we just need to figure out what to do and how to reach them.
[Posted by Kathleen]
Filed under adventures, blogging, health, news, pop culture, random, technology, thoughts, Uncategorized, weird
youtube clip of today: wedding film.
Again, with the warm-and-fuzzies! I can’t stop! The lovely Miss Potter sent this video along, and I don’t think it needs much of an introduction, except to say that it goes along this set of photos:
What a LOVELY wedding. (Lovely is the warm-and-fuzzy word of the week.) And could this couple BE any cuter?! She makes me want to chop off my hair and dye it platinum blonde, and he makes me actually sort of almost like seersucker. Needless to say, around about 2:15 in that video, the tears began a-flowin’. An enormous kudos to photographer/videographer Josh Goleman. You done good, Josh. You done good.
[Posted by Mallory]
mysterious letters: a lovely (creepy?) project.
People, I don’t know what’s come over me, but I can’t stop posting about warm-and-fuzzy stuff. Yesterday I had a slow day at work and organized the shit out of my Google Reader, adding tons and tons of blogs, mostly courtesy of the lovely and tiny Susnan. It was via one of these blogs (thanks, design*sponge!) that I stumbled upon the Mysterious Letters project. The people who started the project, Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe, explain it as such:
In April 2009, we sent a personal, handwritten letter to each of the 467 households in the small Irish village of Cushendall. We hoped these unsolicited letters would prompt neighbourly discussion, spreading across the town, promoting community curiosity.
Lenka and Michael saw this as an art project, and that’s it. Pretty simple. Here are a few sample letters that they sent to the people of Cushendall:
And my favorite:
Perhaps it’s all the warm-and-fuzziness taking over, but I thought this project was nothing but adorable. This clip from a local news program (worth watching if only for the accents, eee!) shows that locals had a different reaction to the mysterious letters. In fact, most of them were at best confused and at worst creeped out and concerned for their safety. I see their point, though I do love the idea in theory. As the anchors say at the end of the clip, Lenka and Michael plan to expand their project and eventually write these letters to everyone in the world. A bit ambitious, maybe, but I’ll be looking out for mine!
What do you think, dear readers? Lovely or creepy? What would you do if you got an unsolicited handwritten letter from a stranger?
[Posted by Mallory]
Filed under adventures, random, the arts
yum yum, it’s national cupcake day!
I don't know why I picked this picture. I actually HATE cats.
Leave it to Six Words to know that today is National Cupcake Day!
As a DC resident, I love a good yuppy, over-priced cupcake from a store that only makes cupcakes (Georgetown Cupcake, cough cough). I could write an ode to the cupcake, but it would probably end up with me talking about my thighs and then leaving work early to go to the gym a cupcake store. Instead, I’m going to let the masters at one of my favorite blogs, Cake Wrecks, do their magic. Click below for some hilarious pictures.
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/08/national-cupcake-day.html
I hope you celebrate this very important day!
[Posted by Kathleen]
Filed under blogging, food, news, pop culture, random
six words to change the world. 