A nod to faith...or just plain weird?

I happened to be stuffing bags of old clothes to send home when I noticed on the bottom of a Forever 21 bag, "John 3:16".

Curiosity, piqued.

Apparently this is nothing new; not only do the Forever 21 bags all carry the reference to the Bible verse:
but there are plenty of other chains that have the same practice. Both here and here are some other examples.

Which makes me wonder, if there's a god, I wonder how he feels about "hamburger and cheeseburger wrappers [pointing] to Revelation 3:20". I hope he'd be pissed off by the pettiness of it.

Halloween Costumes for Babies

As a parent, it is apparently your right to dress your child in whatever hideous, humiliating costume you can find for Halloween. Judging by some of these, the pumpkin costume (filled with comfortable balls of newspaper!) my parents foisted on me seems kind.



Let's get a headstart on some other holidays!




It gets worse...


I suppose I kind of get the whole "baby as food" thing...babies are not good at moving about on their own, much like food...?


Look! He's all ready to fight in McCain's 100 year war!

Little Batman makes me laugh the hardest.

Every year there's one of these

and they never cease to bother me. Pause and think how this year's college freshmen are all children of the 90s.

One of my favorite songs from this year

Lykke Li's acid trip.

Have I mentioned that Scandinavians are among my favorite people in the world?

Apparently a constant of getting old is complaining about everything that changes

So, does that mean Mrs. White is now hispanic?

I'm so disturbed by this,

my stomach, it turns.

Fun things

Least confusing parking garage ever.

2000 Census Bureau results for the ancestry questions...apparently Germans know how to get around.

For the win.

Lamenting the loss of an old friend

Adieu, cassette tape.

The greatest insult the seven year old can wield is calling me a toddler

Mmm, dinner tonight.

I dread the day I have to be a bridesmaid.

Don't you think?

Violent middle school flashback.

The Nirvana baby turned 17.

Ghost towns, around the world.

Protecting yourself during police interrogations.

Girls can add, too!

Something to consider for your travel plans.

A long piece from the NYT Magazine on understanding suicide.

About lists, within this list.

Everything can be arranged to your liking.

I don't care how bad the reviews are.

Mailbox! Mailbox! MAILBOX!

Fonts, personified.

Some random things

Woe is being a shorty.

"Entitled mediocrity". (An interesting tangent to that essay)

The Big Picture is an awesome photojournalism site from the Globe. This selection was particularly...well, just look at the 8th photo.

Not a moment too soon...

Another Boston site slated for "new retail/office space" - the former Shreve, Crump & Low at 350 Boylston.

Sigh.

Title IX says I'm allowed to peg boys in the face with this dodgeball - Me, Second Grade

Title IX will begin to be applied more rigorously to college science programs, in an attempt to increase the numbers of women participating.

Also, apparently no one is able to take (or rather, understand) a joke.

WBUR's Flickr account has a neat photo set up, of pictures from Cambridge's Club 47 (now Club Passim) in the 60's.

How can I possibly wait two weeks?!

X-Files. Do not hurt me the way Indiana Jones did.

Concierge service in short supply! Quick, we must build more towers!

Plans to build a luxury apartment complex (surprise!) and new retail space in DTX, replacing the buildings which currently house Bromfeld Pen Shop and City Sports Downtown.

With the downtown area now chock full of luxury apartments and luxury apartments-to-be (ahem, Archstone Boston Common, The Devonshire, the former Emerson dorms at 100 Beacon, 96 Beacon, 6 Arlington and 130 Beacon, the new W Boston casting its shadow on the Theatre District, the new Ritz-Carlton Boston, Millennium Place, and whatever monstrosity that ate The Littlest Bar) one wonders if rich people have a really hard time finding homes.

Hey, Boston Redevelopment Authority! WTF.

(BTW, I love how the Combat Zone has been flavorfully renamed the "Midtown Cultural District" [any idea why my building gets its own special zone?])

Dear Stuff White People Like, Stop Revealing All My Secrets

For white people, the haircut-with-bangs is an important symbol that a female has completed her transformation from a nerdy girl to a cool woman. In fact, if you went to high school with a nerdy white girl who moved to a big city, there is a good chance she will show up to your high school reunion with this haircut.

Sailing? That's transportation. "Riding a bus isn't a sport, why the fuck should sailing be a sport?"

From looking through the news in the middle of the day:

The hilarious George Carlin died. He will be missed, especially at Shining Time Station.

One bus accident the Fung Wah isn't actually responsible for - shocking, I know!

A triple threat subscription to The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Harper's would surely devour all my time, would it not?

Early onset boredom today helped me to rediscover The Atlantic:

American Murder Mystery - about the movement of urban crime outward from the inner city (this struck me because I'm in the midst of reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities). Particularly eerie were the related archive links that showed up next to this article: From 1913, The Drift to the Cities; from 1966, The Tragedy of Urban Renewal; from 1997, Good News (about community-based housing transforming bad neighborhoods); from 2000,

Notes on the Murder of 30 of My Neighbors.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? - about how the ability to read, specifically lengthy prose ("deep reading"), has been altered in the internet age. Which makes me think: by having a blog full of links that bounce you back and forth from topic to topic, am I only contributing to this evolution of information retention? And is that bad?

HARRISON teaches his film class entitled “How To Ruin Millions Of Childhoods In 2 Hours”

Found "the abridged script" from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull via Kottke. I'm not sure if I'm laughing or crying.

Local news that has nothing to do with sports

In Somerville, Good Times is out and IKEA is in.