Posted in October 2009 …

Fluffcation: Real names of prosimians

Unless, of course, some Wikipedian is punking me, these guys are all related to our friends the lemurs. Say hello to your new friends: False Potto Madame Berthe’s Mouse Lemur Prince Demidoff’s Bushbaby Southern Needle-clawed Bushbaby Lesser Iron-gray Dwarf Lemur And, my personal favorite: Grewcock’s Sportive Lemur The False Potto’s scientific name is, apparently, Pseudopotto … Continue reading »

Fluffcation

Y’all, we are on fluffcation till further notice. We are posting nothing thought-provoking, drama-inducing, or troll-tempting for the immediate future. Anyone who says anything remotely controversial in comments will be thoroughly scolded. Instead, we will all talk about lemurs:      

Up close

Long-time Shapelings know that we are big fans of PostSecret. If you haven’t been there yet, check it out — it’s an amazing project. I loved one of the secrets posted today: [A pointillist painting: Georges Seurat's Esquisse d'ensemble [sketch for a larger work, presumably Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte], with … Continue reading »

Friday fluff: Take back the (diet) food

Shapeling BlueRain points out that in my last post I was unfair to okara, the main ingredient in the Magical Diet Cookies. She notes: Okara (as well as Shirataki mentioned in someone’s comment upthread) is a traditional food item in Japanese cuisine, and having it appropriated as “low-fat/low-cal miracle diet food” is offensive enough, but … Continue reading »

Monstrous cookies for cookie monsters

From the NYT comes this story about the Cookie Diet, a diet plan in which you survive on “six prepackaged cookies a day, plus one ‘real’ meal — say, skinless chicken and steamed vegetables.” The idea here seems to be that you will be so entranced by the idea of eating the sinful “cookies” that … Continue reading »

Getting to 101

A Shapeling (who wishes to remain anonymous for the purpose of this thread) has some questions she’s been mulling after some of our recent discussions about gender and feminism. What do you do when the men in your life are only partway to feminism — when they agree that, say, women should have equal pay … Continue reading »

Sartorial justice

Hey all, remember back in July when Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan mean-girled soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor for not dressing femme enough? It turns out those “1980s lady power broker” suits were chosen for her by “government officials.” There is not enough desk for my forehead right now.

No more “fat talk”

We’ve been deep into Advanced Feminism and Fat Acceptance the last few weeks, but sometimes it’s good to get a reminder of the basics and why we have to start there. The most important step of FA — and the one that often hardest to do — is to stop talking shit about yourself. This … Continue reading »

This one’s for the masochists

You all know that we get a lot of trolls here; usually they are discouraged by our despotic comments policy and give up after one or two bits of low-grade trolling. Of course, when Dude Nation descended upon us to wave their liberty sticks, the frequency and stupidity of the trolling went sky-high. Here’s the … Continue reading »