Some things to think about.

Posted by Ming the Merciless as Guest Author, Ming the Merciless

Iraq. Haditha. Blackwater. George W. Bush. Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo Bay. Rendition. George W. Bush. Torture. Downing Street Memo. Scooter Libby. George W. Bush. Karl Rove. Domestic surveillance. Halliburton. George W. Bush. Dick Cheney. The Patriot Act. Civil liberties. George W. Bush.

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others–as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and officeholders–serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

Henry David Thoreau
Civil Disobedience

Lancome Response

Posted by Ming the Merciless as Guest Author, Ming the Merciless, Tentacle Wagging

Here’s the official Lancome response, folks. According to them, they don’t test finished products on animals. That gives them a lot of wiggle room, so it’s probably safe to say that within the production chain somewhere components of Lancome products are tested on animals. Realistically, if they weren’t, Lancome would have been boasting about it.

From: Consumer Affairs, Lancome (Internet)
To: Ming the Merciless
Date: Fri, Aug 17, 2007 at 7:07 PM
Subject: Ref # 42XXXXX

August 17, 2007

The safety of our consumers is our highest priority at Lancôme, a division of L’Oréal USA, Inc., and we can assure you that our products go through extensive testing to provide the best and safest possible products for our consumers.

L’Oréal is committed to the elimination of animal testing. In 1989, L’Oréal ended all animal testing on its finished products. However, various national and international regulations still require additional testing to guarantee the safety of new ingredients. L’Oréal meets all governmental safety requirements in the 130 countries in which our products are sold.

For more information about L’Oréal’s commitment to the elimination of animal testing, please refer to L’Oréal’s Sustainable Development Report, which is posted on our company’s global website www.loreal.com.

If you are unable to click on the link, copy and paste it into the Address line of your browser. Then click Go or hit Enter on your keyboard.

We appreciate your interest in Lancôme and we hope this information is helpful.

Sincerely,
XXXXXXXXXXX
Consumer Affairs Advisor
Ref # 42XXXXX

Cruelty free?

Posted by Ming the Merciless as Guest Author, Kang & Ming, Ming the Merciless, Resources, Tentacle Wagging

Let me preface this by saying neither Ms. K nor I are fanatical, Birkenstock-wearing, VW-driving, unwashed PETA*-flogging hippies. I was a member of my college’s student environmental action group for a while but I kind of lost interest about three meetings in, when they started planning protests that involved people dressing up like fish and infiltrating paper manufacturing plants. (I’m a little unclear to this day whether the plan was to perform the infiltration while disguised as fish.)

Instead, we’re the target market companies like L’Oreal and Revlon are aiming for. Thirty-something, middle class professional women. And we both make an effort to buy ecologically friendly, animal friendly products. As I write this, I’m finishing my cup of fair trade, ecologically friendly coffee. Made using a recycled paper coffee filter. (And this weekend, I’m going to pick up one of the reusable ones, if they finally have the right size.) Apparently they aren’t listening to their markets because we do still care about animal testing, too.

This morning I had an email from Ms. K, who is planning on reinventing her look and was trying to find information on whether Lancome cosmetics are cruelty free.

The sad answer to that appears to be, “No.” Apparently Lancome’s parent company L’Oreal at one point claimed they were done animal testing (back in the late ’90’s/early ’00’s) when caring about animals was hip and trendy but so far have refused to provide adequate follow-up information to cruelty-free organizations and may still require ingredient suppliers to provide animal test data. So no, L’Oreal/Lancome products cannot be safely assumed to be cruelty-free.

In an effort to clarify the cruelty-free status of Lancome, I’ve gone directly to the source and sent the following communication via their web site:

Dear Lancome;

I have recently been trying to verify your policy on animal testing but am unable to locate this information on your web site. Cruelty-free organizations list your parent company L’Oreal as either testing on animals or requiring unnecessary animal testing data from ingredient suppliers. Can you please clarify the following questions:

Does your company test its products on animals?
Does your company require its ingredient suppliers to provide animal testing data?

As a consumer, this information is important to my purchasing decisions since I strongly believe animal testing for cosmetics to be both unnecessary and highly unethical.

Sincerely,
Ming Merciless

I’ll keep you posted on what they have to say.

L’Oreal does also now own The Body Shop, and according to cruelty-free organizations, those products still do not employ animal testing or ingredients tested on animals. I’m personally ambivalent about using “cruelty-free” products from a company whose parent company has tried to masquerade as cruelty-free without actually making any changes. Perhaps if they see a demand for their cruelty-free brands it will convince them that it is important to consumers, though.

It’s not like going cruelty-free is going to cost a company market share. Nobody has ever stood in the cosmetics aisle looking at mascara saying, “Goddamn, don’t they have anything here that’s blinded some bunnies?”

For those of you that want to see where your products of choice fall (or find alternatives for the ones that fail), here are some useful links:

The Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics
Caring Consumer: A Guide to Kind Living

As a footnote:
Lancome and L’Oreal are also not listed as signers of the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, where companies promise to eliminate carcinogenic, mutagenic, and toxic chemicals from their products. For those of us in Europe, the EU Cosmetics Directive means that companies have to do this anyway for products sold here. Not so for the rest of you, I’m afraid.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics Signers

*More on this later.

How I Mine for Housekeeping

Posted by Ming the Merciless as Guest Author, Ming the Merciless

or Sexist Stereotypes in My Daily Life

I’m a sexist.

Today is the tenth anniversary of the Debian Social Contract and we are having some of the Boyfriend’s friends over for a pancake dinner. He suggested it last night around seven. I said it was okay with me. He’s going to make carrot-polenta European-style pancakes and I’ll make some blueberry-saffron American-style pancakes and possibly some mashed potato pancakes.

My first thought was “Oh my god, I have to clean.”

Not “We have to clean,” but “I have to clean.”

Because housekeeping is still, in my American psyche, the province of women. No one has ever judged a heterosexual man based on his housekeeping. Catty, cutting remarks are not made about the stacks of dishes on their sideboards. But women, ah women…

Maybe it was how I was raised, ostensibly a product of the Northeastern Protestant middle-class. “She’s a terrible housekeeper,” would be said in a lowered voice with raised eyebrows, and applied as equally to women who allowed junk to accumulate on hallway bureaus and left television sets undusted while last night’s dinner dishes waited in the sink as to women who allowed junk to accumulate on every flat surface and then on the surfaces formed by the junk, served dinner on paper plates because there were no clean dishes, and who had forgotten for months to purchase more bags for the vacuum cleaner.

Never a reflection on their husbands. “He’s a terrible housekeeper,” was never uttered.

Maybe it’s different in different parts of the country or different stratas of American society, but I doubt it with the overwhelming prevalence of advertising showing tidy looking women thanking the toilet genie for a new and improved, extra-strength, lilac-scented product; admiring their reflection in gleaming floors, or smiling as they dust the blades of a ceiling fan with a specially designed apparatus containing components developed by NASA. I have a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Clean, with his knowing wink and solitary earring is homosexual. In my head he lisps “Girlfriend, we have got to do something about under that refrigerator! It’s shameful!” He and the Brawny paper towel lumberjack are almost certainly one of those on-again-off-again couples.

I don’t know who does the cleaning in a particular home, whether it’s the man or the woman, or whether they split it equally, but in the back of my mind the credit for a tidy, well-kept house goes to the female half. The blame for a poorly kept one, even if the mess is obviously male in origin, also goes to her. (I suppose if I ever had occasion to make judgments on lesbian housekeeping I could assign credit and blame equally.)

I never thought about it until I left America.

Sweden, with it’s emphasis on equality in both public and private life, made me stop and reflect on the anachronism in my attitude– while I scrubbed the toilet because I would be mortified if our guests think I’m a bad housekeeper.

July 4th: Independence Day

Posted by Ming the Merciless as Guest Author, Ming the Merciless, Politics, Rants

I cannot even begin to express how disillusioned I am with America. It’s broken. Far more badly than we can bear to admit, I think.

George the Honest, whose election to the throne is littered with scandal and irregularities so monstrous that only the insane and the ignorant can maintain their belief that America has free and open elections.

George the Liberator, invading other countries to free them from the yoke of oppression under the thumb of dictators who view civil and human rights as optional. The hypocrisy is so mind boggling, I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

George the Protector, invading other countries, destroying their infrastructure, throwing them into what amounts to civil war and building a wall of civilian bodies between America and her enemies in the name of fighting terror.

George the Just, to whom the laws do not apply and who may override due process at a whim, both to free his friends from the imposition of well-earned punishment and to imprison, without charge or proof or oversight, those that he deems deserving.

George the Humanitarian, who does not authorize torture in prisons on foreign soil solely by virtue of redefining the word torture to exclude water boarding, sleep deprivation, beatings, and other atrocities too horrible to contemplate.

George the Economist, who makes sure Dick Cheney’s Halliburton empire can squeeze out those last few American tax dollars in war profits while under equipped American soldiers are being maimed and crippled in record numbers and being dumped into a VA system that George’s Republican cronies have been financially gutting.

George the Enlightened, who does his best to ensure America will become a Christian Church-State with law based on mythology and whose policies restrict, and will ultimately cause the exodus of, the very sort of minds that helped propel America to the heights she has achieved while American children learn creationism in science classrooms and the wealthy travel to other countries to have their ailments treated with stem-cell therapy and their abortions in clean, safe clinics.

George the Environmentalist, who does not believe in global warming and who sees national park lands and wildlife refuges not as something of value, but as a barrier to providing oil drilling rights to family friends.

George the Patriarch, whose business it is what books you read, who you visit, who you talk to and what you say to them, and whose minions are exempt from the requirement of procuring a search warrant in their quest to keep Americans safe from themselves.

Certainly Congress shares some of the blame for allowing this to continue for as long as it has, but George, who in his coke-addled mind sees himself as the infallible God Emperor of Imperialist America, has worked diligently to render the other branches of government impotent and assume a lion’s share of the power and so he (and his handlers) must assume the lion’s share of the blame.

So, on this Independence Day, all hail America’s Motherfucking King George IV, the man that stole our country.

How did this happen?

Microcelebrity

Posted by Ming the Merciless as Guest Author, Ming the Merciless, T3h Intarweb, The Think Tank

or The Cult of Personality on the Internet

I used to post this kind of random screed at the now defunct www.theted.org. Since it’s not the kind of thing that fits so well in my blog, I thought I’d add it to the more diverse Kangworld.

I was thinking, the other day, about what it takes to be popular on the internet.

Now, Ms. K and myself have both been accused of being “popular.” It never occurred to either of us to apply the label to ourselves. It’s become a running joke. It’s not always a funny one.

The internet blurs that line between public figure and private individual. Putting yourself on the internet creates a public record of yourself. Stupid shit you’ve said, embarrassing photos, the whole nine. After we’ve hung it out there, we don’t get to take it back. No matter how much we may want to in the future. Sure, we want to be known for our brilliance, our shining moments of excellence but whatever goes up has an equal chance of being the thing that starts us down the path to popular. The lowest common denominator being what it is, the more personal and embarrassing the more likely it is to become internet sensation.

I’m not talking about the wannabe celebs that think that YouTube or Blogger will catapult them into stardom. I’m talking about the plain old Joes who take up blogging because it seems neat and their friends do it or who want to post some how-tos or make a web site about their model train collection.

It’s a matter of people being larger than life. It’s an impressionist canvas. A few broad strokes of personality and the brain of the reader, the casual surfer, does the rest. Be engaging, be opinionated, and most of all, produce content. It helps to have a fantastic set of tatas too.

Like anything else, it’s a competition. There are people that want to be popular on the internet. They want a little group of followers around them, idolizing them. Telling them they are great. What is internet popularity though? A hundred people? A thousand? It’s measured in page hits and site visits. And it’s not the kind of numbers that make a Johnny Depp film worth the investment. Microcelebrity.

The element of conversation makes it powerful; it’s different from the popularity of the unapproachable Hollywood star or musician. Some web sites have already seized on that. As usual, porn is on the front line with Suicide Girls and Fatal Beauty adding a new dimension. They bring the ideas and opinions of the girls to life in a way that a centerfold profile never could. They are selling not just the flesh but the personality. A conversation. And people buy.

The unfunny part comes when the obsessives come out of the woodwork. And they do. Even itty bitty communities like Kangworld have the uncomfortable specter of those who, for whatever reason, don’t have the ability to generate that particular cult of personality for themselves. And who have taken bitterly the rejection of being told “please don’t contact me any more.”

In the seedy underbelly of the casual readership are a few who want something more. The reality is that they are strangers, a part of something casual. A nod at the coffee counter, a quick smiley in a blog comment. Pleasantries. In their own heads it becomes more. Proof they own a piece of their own little celeb. That they have been noticed.

It’s a puzzle, the mass of emotion. The entitlement, the mingled admiration and animosity that sometimes emerge. It’s almost Oedipal in some ways. There comes forward a desire to posess, and if that cannot be, to replace.

It’s more common than you think.

I’m still thinking about the phenomena and how it’s changing how we interact with each other. It’s certainly changing how I interact online. How about you?

Corporate Voyeurism II: Getting to know you.

Posted by Ming the Merciless as Blogging, Guest Author, Ming the Merciless, Op/Ed, T3h Intarweb

The advantage that Ms. K and I both have over the MySpace generation is that we understand that what we put out on the internet is public. Very much so. I think that, despite our activity here, we are both pretty private people. We enjoy the pseudo anonymity and trust that, much like if we were having lunch in a restaurant or shopping in the mall, other people may wander by but most of them will keep on going, wrapped up in their own lives. Of course those interested enough to participate have an open invitation to join, but most of them won’t.

On to blogging and corporations… as Ms. K took the position that corporations should be barred from digital snooping on their employee’s personal lives, so I took the position that they are entitled to information about their employees that those employees choose to make available to the entire world via the internet.

First, a company has a legitimate need to perform Google searches related to itself and it’s employees. There are a number of web sites devoted to consumer protection where customers can post reviews and complaints, and with the proliferation of blogs people do share experiences they have had with companies and their employees. If I saw Tina from the Milwaukee Denny’s pick her nose and then serve food without washing her hands, and I blog it, that is pertinent to her employer. (I’ve never been to Milwaukee. You are safe, Tina!) If my cable guy shows up drunk and I blog about it, that information is important to his employer and directly related to his job.

A company also has a legitimate right to information you may make publicly available as it pertains to your job, your work ethic, what you do at work. If someone blogs about stealing from their employer, having sex with a temp in the copy room, how they pretend to be filing but instead take a nap in the 3rd floor conference room every afternoon, I also think that it’s within the employer’s rights to make use of that information. (Stupid, right? But people do…)

An aside: Ms. K mentioned blogging from work, though not necessarily about. I personally don’t think it’s a good idea since an employer may seize on that use of resources as their excuse to dismiss an employee rather than admitting it wasn’t the act of blogging but what was written. Also, it’s a good idea to know the information systems policy. I’ve worked for companies that absolutely forbid any personal use (yeah, right) of their resources and companies who specifically allowed for personal use as long as it didn’t impact job performance or consume excessive amounts of resources.

As Ms. K has pointed out (was it in her post or our conversation?), previously your boss would have to move in the same circles as you to be privy to information about your personal life. That’s over. Companies understand, even if most people don’t, that your clients and coworkers are also privy to that information. If one of the Google hits when someone searches your name is a picture of you doing blow off a dead hooker in Mexico City during a college road trip fifteen years ago, odds are that one of your coworkers (or customers!) will see it. Should your employer be able to fire you for that? I don’t have an easy answer. It’s something that occurred off the clock before you were even hired, but at the same time you could be responsible for undermining millions of dollars spent on marketing in one fell swoop, branding XYZ Corporation “the place where their stock analysts do blow off dead Mexican hookers.”

And what about personal information like that in the article cited? What about normal, every day domestic problems made public not by the potential employee, but by family or friends? What should employers do when faced with “I think my husband is an alcoholic,” “I don’t want to move,” “I think she’s having an affair,” or any of the multitude of personal issues that may be raised?

Those things do have an effect on someone’s job performance.

However, I’m nothing if not fair. The burden should not remain entirely on the employee, to be handed a rejection letter or pink slip with no recourse for something that may or may not have any impact on their professional life.

When an employer chooses to make use of the internet to research current or potential employees, those employees and candidates should be made aware. In my opinion, it falls under the heading of performing periodic background checks on employees. The difference is that with so many of us putting so much of our lives online, the insight into who we are is much greater than an employer was ever privy to before, when receiving vetted personal references and having access primarily to legal records and credit histories. Most employers didn’t have the recourse to find out whether we have substance abuse problems, medical problems, personal problems, what our personal beliefs and ideologies are. Now they do, if we choose to put that information out there.

The employer also needs to accept some responsibility for what they find. If they find blogs detailing sexual harassment in the workplace, personal problems due to long hours spent working, financial problems due to low wages, the need for better benefits, they need to step up and do what they can to correct those work related issues. Again, previously, the employer would only be aware of those problems if the employee raised the concerns or they moved in the same circles. Now, if they are doing internet searches on employees, they don’t have that excuse.

That is partly why I do find the article that Ms. K has quoted so interesting. It’s concrete proof that the employer did take into account information about the domestic situation of the employee found via the internet. What is missing is what, exactly, concerned Noss. Certainly, Mr. Pihlström is not the only person in their employ to have a partner less than thrilled at the prospect of relocation. Do they ask in the interview how domestic partners feel about the potential relocation and he lied? Why does the potential employee’s home situation matter to them?

From a business perspective, an employee with an unhappy home life often brings that with them to work. Performance issues based on that information are a valid concern, as are worries that if they go to the expense of relocating and training Mr. Pihlström, he may abandon the position under pressure from his girlfriend.

People are not just the nine to five cogs in the corporate machine that companies wish they were and if those companies choose to make decisions based on the very human aspects of their employee’s lives that occur outside of working hours, they forfeit the right to ask those same employees to check their personal lives, beliefs, and opinions at the door.

Employers need to open a dialog about what they find, not least of all because there is no guarantee that the blog they are reading definitively to the John Doe in their employ. An employer that is going to make decisions based on a person’s life outside of working hours first needs to make sure that they are reading about the right person. And the person in question deserves the opportunity to explain themselves and to be made aware of any concerns the employer might have.

Ultimately, the burden falls on the person who makes that information available. Blogging is something you do on your own, from the privacy of your own home, but the information you put out there is available to anyone, anywhere, anytime. It’s not private. When you discuss your domestic situation, your politics, your sexual preferences, you are not talking only among friends. The real world analogy is not sitting around your kitchen table having coffee with the girls (or a beer with the guys). It’s not even really like the crowded restaurant or the mall, because there you don’t wear a name tag. When you blog there are privacy controls, you have the ability to restrict who can read what you write. If you leave it open to everyone, the expectation should be that anyone may read it.

Blogs as a Serious Literary Venue

Posted by Ming the Merciless as Blogging, Guest Author, Ming the Merciless, Uncategorized

I fired my old blog. Oh, I still have my Sweden blog, neglected despite my big plans. In large part it is neglected because my pimary reason for setting it up was for friends and family to keep up with the happenings in my life. The sad truth is, very few read it. Mostly people from Kangworld, and y’all can talk to me here. I’m thinking of dumping it, too, and putting the meager content somewhere else. I love Kang’s blog, but I don’t think that blogging is for me.

Enough of my personal experience with blogging, on to the topic…

I have participated in a discussion on a message board recently about the feasibility of a blog as a serious literary publication. I assume that, although the initial message was posed as a question, the author was actually looking for stroking and encouragement for a project he was going ahead with regardless, not actual opinions. It always hurts when we are told that we are a day late and a dollar short.

For your enjoyment, I am reposting here the thoughts I shared there in response to the question of whether a blog can be a publishing venue for serious writers.

I think you need to differentiate blog software from the concept of a blog. It is certainly possible to use the software as a publishing platform for an online literary magazine and your idea of publishing a yearly print copy is really good. (And thanks to Cafepress, Lulu, and any number of other sites, also free and easy for anyone who doesn’t care about making any money.)

The blog as a concept doesn’t work as a serious literary venue since it comes with an inherent lack of external editorial control. The whole point in a blog is that you can publish anything, good or bad. And the vast majority of blogs are, if not exactly bad, at least lacking in any literary merit. The truth is that very few writers (if any!) churn out literary gems every time that cannot be improved by an experienced editor.

The very thing you pointed out that makes blogs attractive- free and easy to maintain- is also what means that there is going to be a whole lot more chaff than wheat. It costs money up front to put out a print publication so those publishers have a vested interest in making sure that they have a quality product. A purely online publication with volunteer staff on a free host doesn’t have that pressure and can take risks. It also doesn’t face financial repercussions if it sets the bar lower.

I personally think there is room for both paradigms, traditional print publication (and it’s online counterpart) and self-published blogs. The role of traditional publishing is changing, but one thing it will continue to provide is a very valuable quality control. Blogs will provide limitless variety. It’s the difference between going to a five star restaurant and a $1.99 all-you-can-eat buffet.

The original author followed up with a response basically telling me that I have not yet seen the light and how in the world of what-if, my assumptions are flawed. (Note, no attempt to explain why they are incorrect was made.) To which I responded:

With all due respect, the terms are not synonymous. All blogs are online publications. Not all online publications are blogs.

The industry changes, trends happen. And eventually the blogosphere is going to be inundated by so much crap that it’s not going to be worth the time it takes to find something good to read (if it isn’t already). Even now, if I want to read something good online, I hit a print publication’s site like The New Yorker or The Atlantic online or else an online publication I trust not to waste my time like Mad Hatters Review. Not the blogosphere.

There can be exceptions, of course. As it says on Technorati’s main page: “71 million blogs… some of them have to be good.” The same things that make the blogosphere attractive to you make it attractive to millions of other people. You may care about the literary quality of what you post/publish but most of them don’t. It’s already like looking for a needle in a haystack to find something worth reading.

If you are going to go ahead with your blog idea, what you really need to consider is how, with all those other blogs out there, you are going to get your good one on the top of the heap, not buried on page 265 of someone’s Google search results.

In response to a follow up that pointed out possibilities for reaching niche markets, assuming that technologically the filtering is sufficient to weed out the crap:

Your point about micro-markets is dead on. It also creates immediate conversation with readers in a way that traditional print publications cannot make possible. (Though now that they have very nice, expensive web sites, it becomes much more possible.)

There has been a lot of hype about blogging, culminating with Time’s 2006 person of the year article. Eventually it is going to fall more in line with reality- especially when Erik Schmidt of Google (which owns Blogger) comes out and says that the average blog has one reader. In 2005, Dave Pollard (a Salon blogger) calculated that average readers hang around for only 40 seconds per page view. That means a lot of those people clicking through skim quickly and then leave. (That one has the best graph, but some quick Google research actually seems to show a declining trend…)

Blogging is hip, fun, and we all get an equal chance to be internet rock stars. But still, the attitude toward blogging (vlogging, podcasting, etc.) is not that it’s a destination in it’s own right. People believe it can be their springboard to something else. Usually that something is traditional print (or film or music). That’s like an aspiring actress dreaming she’ll be discovered when Steven Spielberg unexpectedly drops by a Des Moines Denny’s for dinner one night. Could it happen? Sure. Likely?

I’m actually not down on blogging, it can be a really enjoyable activity. Ultimately it’s exhibitionist verbal masturbation, though. You have to do it for your own enjoyment regardless of whether anyone else shows up.

Traditional publishing, with submissions, editors, and rejection isn’t going away. The principles behind how they do things are still valid. As you pointed out, it has evolved away from vanity presses. Blogs are basically just another version of that. The quality has not necessarily improved with the maturation of the system but I don’t think that blogs will do anything to improve the quality either.

That was as far as I got before I said “fuck it” and decided to share the conversation with Kangworld rather than continuing it on the message board. I never bothered to post the last segment.

As a footnote, the person who originally posed the question went on to implement the idea and, in the first post, made the their/there mistake.

Q.E.D

Uhm…

Posted by Miss Kitten as Guest Author, Who the phuck can label this?

Let your love flow this Valentine’s day by crafting some unique gifts made
from tampons. Say it with a colorful bouquet of tampon flowers, or let her
know how you really feel with a pair of bloody heart tampon earrings. Use
a little menstrual magic to enhance your romance.

Copied/pasted from Tampon Crafts, a website with craft ideas for a….uhm…non-traditional medium.

Bloody tampon earrings! Oh darling…just what I’ve always wanted!!

Buying A Guitar

Posted by Dock Ellis as Guest Author, Music, Op/Ed, Personal

So this weekend I bought an electric guitar. I wrote a lengthy dissertation about it which you can read under the “pages” column, or by clicking here.