Hey,

I think you are cool. I know a lot of people make fun of you and shit, but fuck it, I loved Mean Girls and it can't have been easy to let people know you were in the middle of a lesbian relationship while you were under contract to Disney for christ sakes.

Plus, your family is a nightmare, you've been in the spotlight since you were like 12 and I can't imagine if my relationship breakup arguments when I was 19 were fucking saved by TMZ for posterity.

But, today, I hope you are sitting somewhere and paying real, real close attention to the stories about Casey Johnson's death.

Serious, LiLo, Casey was a blond haired near billionaire who also had a love of drugs, drama and the fairer sex. As Jezebel points out it must have sucked for Casey to have her relationships posted all over the tabloids with the focus on her sexual orientation. I suspect you have some sympathy for her situation. While there is a sense in America that being rich and famous and white and privileged gives you a free pass in America, it clearly doesn't.

Casey made it to 30. By the time she died she'd been cut off from most of her family money, was about to have most of her possessions repossessed and her essential financial plan was to marry a MTV reality star in order to pay for her drug habits.

At the end of the day you can argue about what led Casey to this. Too much money too young? The tabloids? Trying to be gay or bi or whatever in a straight society?

But, no matter what aimed the gun, it's the drugs that pulled the trigger. Use her as a lesson. Don't let your family, the paparazzi and the people who make you feel weak win.

When you get rid of the drugs you'll probably find out who you are and you'll probably like that person. And, the people around you will probably like her too.

So, think long and hard today and see if you can dodge the abyss.

I know I want to learn about the woman you can become.

Love,

Bart

People often talk about making a cruiser weight class because the 235lbs guys are too small for the 265+ guys. I don't think there is enough high end talent to break that division in two.

However there is enough talent to break 155 and 170 in to 155, 165 & 175.

Gods and guitars : seeking the sacred in post-1960s popular music / Michael J. Gilmour.

CONTENTS: Spirituality in post-1960s lyrics -- Religion on record : popular music's anxiety of influence -- Church in a guitar case : comfort and compassion in popular music -- Outrageous religion : sex, defiance, and obsession with the sacred -- Looking beyond the steeple and menorah -- Fade out : stealing from the sacred and rewriting religion.

Tuning in : American narrative television music / Ron Rodman.

CONTENTS: Introduction : what were musicians saying about television music during the first decade of broadcasting? -- Toward an associative theory of television music -- "Hello out there in TV land" : musical agency in the early television anthology drama -- "And now a word from our sponsor" : musical structure and mediation in early TV commercials -- "Beam me up, Scottie!" : leitmotifs, musical topos, and ascription in the sci-fi drama -- "Go for your guns" : narrative syntax and musical functions in the TV western -- Tube of pleasure, tube of bliss : television music as (not so) drastic experience -- "And now another word from our sponsor" : strategies of occultation and imbuement in musical commercials -- "Just the facts, ma'am" : musical style change and markedness in the police drama -- "The truth is out there" : music in modern/postmodern television.

The Internet dating site, Beautiful People, canceled the memberships of 5,000 people because they put on a few pounds over the holidays.

According to BeautifulPeople.com, ''vigilant members'' called for drastic action after users posted photos of themselves celebrating Christmas and the New Year - revealing they had ''let themselves go''.

Robert Hintze, founder of BeautifulPeople.com, said: ''As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld.

''Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.''

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Because, you know, clearly, all skinny people are beautiful and it's impossible for chubby people to be attractive.

We went to see 'Sherlock Holmes' on New Years Eve. I had been looking forward to it, but I really wasn't impressed. The story was a giant mess about a plan for world domination. Holmes was a combination of learned genius and action hero, and, while that concept could, theoretically, be a rocking good time, I feel that the movie just made a random hash of it.

However, I did love the look of the movie, and the title character as played by Robert Downey Junior. His half-mad, driven genius is a thing of beauty. That may seem a contradiction of my previous claim that his genius-action-hero is a mess of a character. But, now I'm talking not about how Holmes functions (or doesn't) within the story, but only about watching the face, the eyes, and sensing the explosive spirit of the character behind. If the writing had matched the standards of RDJ's acting, it could have been a great film.



( Click to see more RDJ under the cut, if you're into that sort of thing )

I think this Lady Gaga upskirt finally answers the question.

( Posted strictly for scientific purposes. )

The shock of this link isn't that it reminded me that Demi Moore dabbled in porn photo shoots for Oui and Playboy back before she became a movie star.

It's that I'd forgotten what female pubic hair looked like in porn in the early 80s. I mean, I remembered that there was more of it than today, but I'd forgotten just how MUCH more of it was considered normal in a porn shoot.

It also makes it fairly clear that somewhere along the way she got a boob job.

Of all my vices the only one that my doctor has asked me to stop is coffee. He says I can drink with my Not Go Crazy Pills and that smoking - for the moment - decreases my anxiety, but that coffee will fuck with me.

So, for more than a year I haven't had any coffee. But, on Friday I woke up hungover, Rome Girl had crashed at a friends house, I had a shit load of work to do and I wanted to get out in the world/read a book in a cafe/hang out with some friends.

I figured how bad could it be? I drink a coca cola every day and don't notice any negative reactions. Plus, it was a little cold and coffee is so fucking warm.

Obviously, you see where this is going. I had a couple cups of coffee - and holy mother of fuck was that a bad idea.

I became ridiculously paranoid, convinced that Rome Girl didn't love me, that all my friends hated me, that everyone saw a black soul inside me, that I was going to get mugged, people were trying to kill me and that no one fucking cared.

It was exactly like what used to happen to me before I started my medication (and when I used to drink a lot of coffee.)

I ended up having to self medicate with extra Not Go Crazy Pills and some booze just to stop the pounding in my chest and chase away the demons. I didn't sleep at all Friday night and it wasn't until I was having drinks with Rome Girl and Hippy IT Boy Saturday night that I felt like a valid human being again.

So, there you have it. No more coffee for me. I'm not going to ask why coffee fucks me up and coca cola doesn't. All I know is that I've proven my doctor is right when he says "don't drink coffee with these fucking pills."

I just wish I had trusted him and hadn't had to figure this out the hard way.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theninhotline/TWxQ/~3/M9VOjivBgBg/index.php

Some of these updates are a little behind due to the holidays and Leviathant not being around to remind me to update regularly since he's currently climbing pyramids and hanging out with mummies in Egypt. Apologies for the laziness, and now, the news.Don't look now, but another green Fragility guitar has been added to the NIN Garage Sale on eBay; this time it has two knobs. Could this be THE hyste [cont...]

PICKS NOT SPOILERS!!!!

Rashad Evans vs. Thiago Silva
Evans

Paul Daley vs. Dustin Hazelett
Daley

Joe Lauzon vs. Sam Stout
Lauzon

Duane Ludwig vs. Jim
Miller

Junior Dos Santos vs. Gilbert
Yvel

Martin Kampmann vs. Jacob Volkmann
Kampmann

Cole Miller vs. Dan Lauzon
Lauzon

The bad thing about New Year's Day is that Virgin is closed so I can't go out and buy 37 live Motley Crue DVDs.

The good thing about New Year's Day is that Virgin is closed so I can't go out and buy 37 live Motley Crue DVDs.

I made it awake until 8:30 a.m.

"What were you doing," Rome Girl asked.

"Playing Motley Crue on YouTube and drinking recklessly like any good American," I responded.

How long did you guys make it?



P.S IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING, YES THIS IS EXACTLY HOW I PICTURE MYSELF WHEN I LOOK IN THE MIRROR.

Marilyn Monroe and Lana Turner.

And I'd give them my own special sauce.

What I've read! f = fiction, nf = non-fiction

1. The Appeal by John Grisham (f)
2. Living a Life That Matters by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner (nf)
3. Against Medical Advice by Hal Friedman and James Patterson (nf)
4. The Truest Heart by Samantha James (f)
5. Love is Blind by Lindsay Sands (f)
6. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (f)
7. M Butterfly by David Henry Hwang (f)
8. Home: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson (f)
9. A Bone From a Dry Sea by Peter Dickenson (f)
10. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (f)
11. The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic by Steven Johnson (nf)
12. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (f)
13. The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong (nf)
14. Through the Narrow Gate by Karen Armstrong (nf)
15. Escape by Carolyn Jessop (nf)
16. Daughter of the Saints: Growing Up in Polygamy by Dorothy Allred Solomon (nf)
17. Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon by Kellogg (f)
18. Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels by Hella Winston (nf)
19. Inside the Mormon Mind by Elizabeth T. Tice (nf)
20. The Copper Beech by Maeve Binchy (f)
21. One for the Morning Glory by John Barnes (f)
22. The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (f)
23. Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (nf)
24. Moab is My Washpot by Stephen Fry (nf)
25. Let Your Life Speak: Listening For the Voice of Vocation by Parker J Palmer. (nf)
26. All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot. (nf)
27. Passing by Patricia Jones. (f)
28. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. (f)
29. Theater of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal. (nf)
30. The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino (f)
31. The Global Achievement Gap by (nf)
32. Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall (nf)
33. Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire (nf)
34. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher (f)
35. All the Fishes Come home to Roost by Rachel Manija Brown (nf)
36. Watch out for the chicken feet in your soup by Tomie dePaola (f)
37. Liar by Justine Larbalestier (f)
38. My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor (nf)
39. Push by Sapphire (f)
40. Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody (nf)
41. Ordinary People by Judith Guest (f)
42. How to Survive in Your Native Land by James Herndon (nf)
43. The Way it Spozed to Be by James Herndon (nf)
44. Wasted by Marya Hornbacher (nf)
45. Lavender Morning by Jude Deveraux (f)
46. Madness by Marya Hornbacher (nf)
47. Destroying the World to Save It by Robert Jay Lifton (nf)
48. An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison (nf)

Happy New Year you great big beautiful blogmass!

Depending on your time zone, it is the last day of 2009 or the first day of the new decade. So, to sum up:

I have had my share of ups-and-downs. I've laughed, I've cried, I visited Seattle, Baltimore, Rome, explored more of Los Angeles, moved into my own place, and worked pretty damn hard at this thing called "teaching". All in all, an up-and-down year and I'm looking forward to the new one.

I will post my book list when I get back to my own laptop. Only read 48 out of the intended 50, but this is impressive considering the amount of stuff I've done in addition to reading this year. Also a lot of half-read books, which I don't count but could be added up to fill in the missing two. Also, I read a great deal more non-fiction than last year, which was also one of my goals! But, I'll stop talking about it until I can actually post the list.

Goals for 2010:

1. Aim in the direction of medical school. (I am almost too afraid to put this on here, as talking about it means I'm going to try and therefore potentially fail, but dammit, if I've wanted to do this since I was seven then it's about damn time I got on the ball.)

2. Write more.

3. Find a loving, stable, non-platonic, committed relationship in roughly my geographic area. An approximation thereof would be fine. The loving and stable are, of course, non-negotiable.

4. Forgive myself more frequently. Be kind.

5. Continue to spend time with my family, especially my sisters.

6. Laugh more.

7. Art. What happened to me making art? It's like a cactus flower. About time for the rains to come.

8. 50 Books 2010, baby!

9. Joyfully expand my knowledge of science and mathematics.

10. Seek peace.

If I can do all of this, I am satisfied that the rest can take care of itself.

Happy forthcoming 2010, y'all, hope to see more of your smiling faces in this new year.

Some things occur once in a blue moon...like MTR smiling for the camera! May this year be better than the last for him and for us.

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