Tweets From the Mouth of GOD

By which I mean, Oprah has a Twitter account.
And her caps lock it stuck on.

Here's who she's following:
Demi and Ashton
Shaq
George Stephanopoulis
Jimmy Fallon
And of course: Gayle King

Just FYI

Best. Dr. Phil. Ever.

I'm sorry Oprah, but these day's when I get home from work and am confronted with the tivo choice between you and Dr. Phil...4 out of 5 it's the bald one.

And yesterday...yesterday he had on women who craft unnervingly real looking baby dolls and then create nurseries for them. It's called reborning.
No I haven't heard of it either but here's a pull from reborndollhouse.com:
Some people find these dolls downright creepy. But collectors feel there’s nothing unusual about their passionate hobby. We tend to agree as this is truly an extraordinary talent that a reborn artist should be proud of. Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion and we respect that as well.

They're freakishly real looking. And by real, I mean, they really look like dead babies.















And today he's having on a couple who's fighting because the wife believes she's a gay man trapped in a woman's body. Just like me!!!!

Thank you god for the gift of Dr. Phil five days a week.

Oprah at Grant Park!!!

"This is democracy at its finest."

The Precious Klum-Seals and Their Seal Pups

It was absolutely impossible to chose a picture of Seal and Heidi Klum-Seal for this post because in ever single one they're both totally beautiful and look completely entranced with each other.
Bitches!

I kid, I kid!! I love the Klum-Seals, I want to be the Klum-Seals. Look! They're on Oprah! They probably went right home, had sex and then met up with Tim Gunn for a light dinner.

Now check out this aw and barf inducing interview with Seal in the Mail online:

'I was taken aback when I met her,' says Seal. 'I thought she was one of the most beautiful women I'd seen. I thought: "Wow! Whoever goes out with that girl is one lucky guy!...A month into our relationship, she told me she was pregnant, but was no longer with the father. I told her it didn't change the way I felt about her. Apart from being my wife, she's also my best friend.'

So cute!!! Plus he has Lupus, which who cares, except that I have Lupus and in my mind that makes us friends. Friends who don't have each other's phone numbers, but friends none the less.

Oprah Again!

Maybe you know, maybe you don't but Ms. Oprah will be on 30 Rock this November!!! They filmed the segment earlier this week and in a press release Tina Fey stated, "I would like to announce that we are officially best friends."

Oprah Changes Lives

Oprah changes lives is something my mom and I say a lot in jest when we're talking about her or her show, but anyone who's watched Oprah with any regularity over the past 20 years knows that she straight up does change lives.

It's the reason why whenever you see Oprah talking to women on the street at least 50% of the time the women break out crying before they can say anything.

There's an article today in the NYTimes about the unstoppable popularity of Oprah in Saudi Arabia where the show has been broadcast since 2004. The weird thing is, only shows on homosexuality are censored. Why weird? Because most women in Saudi Arabia can't drive, can't show any part of their body including their face, and in many cases can't leave their homes. If you want to prop up that kind of strict patriarchal system maybe you shouldn't show Oprah twice a day.

In a country where women are forbidden to vote, or to travel without the permission of a male guardian, a sense of powerlessness can lead women to look for unlikely sources of rescue, Ms. Muhammad explained. “If women here have problems with their fathers or their brothers, what can they do but look to Oprah?” she asked. “The idea that she will come and help them is a dream for them.”

Nayla, the homemaker in Dammam, a Persian Gulf port city, says Ms. Winfrey helps her cope with a society that does not encourage her to have interests. “The life of a woman here in Saudi — it makes you tired and it makes you boring,” she said, sighing.

Like many Saudi women, Nayla struggles with obesity, a major issue in the kingdom because many women are largely confined to their homes and local custom often prevents them from participating in sports or even walking around their neighborhoods.

She says that Ms. Winfrey has inspired her to lose weight and to pursue her education through an online degree course, a method acceptable to her husband since she will not have to leave home.

God Bless you Oprah!

Annette Obrestad: my new HERO

Do you know that when Oprah talks about a female hero she calls her a 'she-ro'
Yeah I can't support that. Sorry Oprah.















More on topic have you heard about this awesome bitch??? I read about Annette first in BUST though of course I can't link bc they're the kind of magazine that wants you to BUY the magazine to read the content. Ugh, you can read her profile here though, and really, she's all over the damn place if you read poker sites.

She's 19, she lives in Norway and she's the youngest winner of the World Series of Poker (you get a bracelet) and the only female player to EVER rank #1 in online poker play.

Whatever, I know, you don't care about poker, especially online poker.
Well how about how she won a 180 person online tournament without looking at her cards!!! Well she peeked one time during an all in situation. BUT STILL!!!

She's like a zillionaire now and she's only getting started, keep your eye on her! Or don't worry, I will for you.

New in ANTM

Yes, I hate Tyra Banks as much as you do, but come on, how hysterical that she's now immortalized in wax at Madam Tussauds in DC. They got a little confused though and put her in the 'glamor room'. Hopefully they'll clear everything up and have her moved to the 'love to hate' room or the 'I know Oprah Winfrey and you, ma'am are no Oprah Winfrey' room or the 'take a hint from this wax dummy and shut your cake hole' room. Oh, I could go on and on, but I kid, I kid. Without ANTM my life would be dark and blurry because I'd have no idea how to let the light hit my face. So thank Tyra.

I'm also ready to admit that I want to go and have my picture taken with her. Though I can't decide if I want to 'smile with my eyes' or just be fierce. Ideas?

Related, if you can take, it check out the cover story about Ms. Banks in the June 1st NY Times Mag. She has 275 smiles, people, how many do you have???
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Okay, too much Tyra! Check out my girl Dani, my favorite ANTM winner from, oh I don't know, cycle 1000 or something. Please it was 3 years ago, who can remember that far back! She's the new face of Tory Burch (!) who I've never heard of, probably because after some web searching it appears that she only dresses old, rich, white ladies, from the East Coast. Though this season she seems to have branched out to old, white, ladies who take a lot of acid.

Anyway! Good for you, Dani! They may have taken the gap in your teeth but they can never take your spirit!
Well it kind of looks like they might have taken a little of it, based on this picture. Don't be afraid to flaunt what's left of that gap, girl, and work those old lady clothes!


I would also like to point anyone who's at all interested to my abso favorite ANTM blogger, Rich, at fourfour.

Aggregator? I just met her.

No original thought here, I just wanted to share some fascinating interweb finds from the past 2 weeks. Some of them are kind of long reads (like this post) but there's no fluff. 100% satisfaction, 100% of the time, that's my motto!

First a pretty short one - This article from the NYTimes about the dying, rural, northern, Albanian custom of women who swear a vow of celebacy and become the man of the house is one of the most interesting things I've ever read, ever. Def check out the slide show.

'Back then, it was better to be a man because before a woman and an animal were considered the same thing,' said Ms. Keqi, who has a bellowing baritone voice, sits with her legs open wide like a man and relishes downing shots of raki.

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Actually, likewise this article in the New Yorker about itching. Well it's about itching but mostly about a new way of looking at how our brains percieves visual, tactile, aural...information and turn it in to what we consider our 'perception' of the outside (and inside) world.

The account of perception that’s starting to emerge is what we might call the “brain’s best guess” theory of perception: perception is the brain’s best guess about what is happening in the outside world. The mind integrates scattered, weak, rudimentary signals from a variety of sensory channels, information from past experiences, and hard-wired processes, and produces a sensory experience full of brain-provided color, sound, texture, and meaning. We see a friendly yellow Labrador bounding behind a picket fence not because that is the transmission we receive but because this is the perception our weaver-brain assembles as its best hypothesis of what is out there from the slivers of information we get. Perception is inference.

That may all sound like a lot of blah, blah, blah... but there's also a story of a woman who has a phantom itch soooooo bad that one night while sleeping she scratches right through her damn skull TO HER BRAIN. Then, because they can't find anything physically, medically, wrong with her scalp to explain the itch, she ends up spending 2 years in a locked medical ward sleeping in a foot ball helmet with white mitts taped on to her hands!!!! Now 7(!) years later,

...she has gradually learned to protect herself. She trims her nails short. She finds ways to distract herself. If she must scratch, she tries to rub gently instead. And, if that isn’t enough, she uses a soft toothbrush or a rolled-up terry cloth. "I don’t use anything sharp,” (BUT)...Still, the itching remains a daily torment. "I don’t normally tell people this," she said, "but I have a fantasy of shaving off my eyebrow and taking a metal-wire grill brush and scratching away."

The article is 8 pages long buy how can you not read it?????

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Behold!!! The most thought-provoking article you'll ever read about real dolls. Seriously, ah-mazing. It's from Salon from a couple years ago but I can't imagine much has changed besides some of the technology. I've been talking about this with anyone who will listen all week, and here's a little gem my boyfriend have been acting out ad nauseum all week-

"He asked me if I could make him a silicone dog, because he was a breeder, and he didn't want to hurt his dogs anymore, he said. He talked like right out of the movie 'Deliverance.'" ..."'Aw, I don't want to hurt ma dawgs, I like ma dawgs ... kin you make me one so ah kin still use it fer the sex?' And when I realized that he was legitimate, I was shocked. And I just politely said no, I'm sorry, gotta go, click."

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The Washington Post has a great article about the burgeoning use of ecstasy to help treat post traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is one of the hidden costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even the Pentagon acknowledges that at least 50,000 soldiers (4% of those deployed) are affected, and their care, long term, is extremely expensive. PTSD sufferers make up only 8% of veteran's medical claims, but receive 20% of all payouts. Also, their therapeutic use could hasten ecstasy's legal, recreational use. Yay for all of us!

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The pregnant man gave birth!!!!!!!

Any excuse to show Oprah.

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In honor of 4th of July (which is already over, I know) here's a totally rad article from the Atlantic about competitive eating.

“Nostradamus, born in the early sixteenth century, actually mentioned the Grilled Cheese Championship in his poetic yet cryptic quatrains,” George Shea says. “He said, ‘And at one point under the bright sky they shall gather to eat, they shall gather to eat the cheese that has been pouched in bread and grilled!”

Yes it's competitive eating season. This article is also a little old but what the hey, you'll never have to read another article about esophagus stretching again, it's the definitive one!! Please, please, for my sake take a moment to really apreciate the seal of the International Federation of Competitive Eating. I don't know what genius created it but they have officially sold me on the 'sport'.

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One time 2 of my friends and I were doing a township clean up in high school for some extra money but there were so many ticks they let us go home early. Ticks are freaky. We went to a dinner to get grilled cheeses and check ourselves in the bathroom for hidden ticks - I had 9, and my friend Robbie had one on his junk. Lymes disease is no joke people, didn't you watch Real World Seattle??????

So, the secret life of a tick from slate, with this gem about how ticks make bacon -

The male approaches from below, then uses his mouthparts to pluck a packet of sperm called a spermatophore from his genital pore. He delivers the packet into his partner's genital pore with his hypostome, the same barbed hollow needle that he sticks into mammals....After the female drops to the ground, full of blood and sperm, she lays her eggs, and then the fun is definitely over. She begins to atrophy. Her intestines spill out in a yellow blob.

All this talk of genital pores is getting me kind of hot.
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This last one is just disturbing, read at your own risk.

Best. Oprah. Ever.

I really don't care, yes I love Oprah.
Yes, I watch her every day.
Yes, I got Tivo when I got a 9-5 specifically so I wouldn't miss her shows.
So what!

Some times she disappoints, I'm not so into her celebrity interviews and shows where she gives shit away. I mean, every episode can't be women who got gastric bypass, lost hundreds of pounds and then became sex addicts or alcoholics. Those gems are to be relished when they come.

But yesterday Oprah really delivered, for real!

First of all the topic was people struggling with OCD which is probably my favorite mental disability to hear about. So awesome.
Then it had Dr. Oz, who is one of my TV boyfriends.
Love him!
(via. Oprah.com)






Then the doctors and the OCD people all met up on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, also known as the Rocky steps, also known as the place my Mom works as a docent.
Sweet!








Then to cap it all off, they took a bus to Camp Ockanickon, a camp we used to go to when I was in (ahem) Girl Scouts. Which was nice, because, memories. It's also the first place I learned about the Jersey Devil and how he was going to come eat us if we didn't 'Shut the fuck up and go to sleep already!'

The show totally delivered. I don't want to ruin it for you but toilet seats were licked and pancakes were thrown up and in the end everyone was able to stop combing the fringe on their rug, use the toilet and eat food with their hands! Yay for everyone!

If you want a recap and more pictures, check it out!!