Project Runway Season Nine: Go to Your Corner

Hey kids, shake it loose together. It’s the final challenge before the Fashion Week kids are chosen. Are you excited? Are you thrilled? Are you filled with a lingering ennui, one that can’t be shaken no matter how many cigarettes you smoke, drinks you drink, bums you roll in an alley? No? Just me? Well, then, on with the show!

We join Smeagol and Gay Ryan Reynolds in their room at Atlas, where they discuss Miss Bertina. Oh, Miss Bertina, how we mis-judged you, they lament. You should have stayed and Kimberly Goodpants should have left, wails Smeagol. We hardly knew ye, weeps Gay Ryan Reynolds. How sentimental. A quick fade over to the ladeez and it’s all back-slapping and smiles. What is our lesson to learn here? Spoilers and more, after the jump. Continue reading →

A Reason, A Season, or A Lifetime

They look like friends for life.

I have been putting off meeting with two girls from grad school for the longest time.

One worked in the grad office with me throughout our time in school. We were ok friends; hung out outside of school and campus events sometimes, but she moved away for a while and we kind of lost touch. The other I had one or two classes with and I don’t think I ever hung out with outside of school or school functions. She was more of a colleague than a friend. I’ve bumped into both these girls around campus a few times since this semester has started, making a promise to have some drinks and catch up. We were supposed to get together on Wednesday, but they changed the location from my usual Wednesday hangout spot to one of their apartments. Continue reading →

Brookfield Backs Off: Zuccotti Park Showdown Avoided Last-Minute

Considering that over twelve hours had passed since Mayor Bloomberg announced that the Occupy Wall Street protesters had until 7 am today to clear out of the park, I had arrived in Zuccotti Park early this morning expecting to see an organized resistance. But as I pressed into the tightly-packed crowd surrounding, the mood looked to be one of uncertainty. In the center of the square, the General Assembly was doing a mic check, but the most of the chants became incomprehensible once they reached the edges. Only an hour remained until the announced deadline and no one seemed sure what exactly was going to happen at 7. Continue reading →

The Story of Why Wall Street is Being Occupied

Henry Blodget put together a simple yet incredibly effective presentation over at Business Insider yesterday. The series of economic charts tell the story of how the rich have spent much of the past 25 years steadily taking ownership of nearly the entire U.S. economy. The 99% indeed.

 

Project Runway Liveblog; Final Five!

Yep, we’re down to five fine sewtestants.  Ok, let’s not sugarcoat it – we have 5 people who can sew and attempt to make good TV.  Basically we’re watching for the auf’ings at this point, aren’t we?

Speaking of auf’ings – who’s your choice?  As usual, I’m interested in seeing Joshua go down in flames, but I’m pretty sure Barbie has been doused with enough of the Nina haterade to go downhill this time.  Who will win?  Who will lose?  Who will end up drunk by the end of the episode (this girl)? Continue reading →

Gap Closing a Third of all US Stores

Today Gap announced that they are closing one third of their U.S. stores to focus on international growth. Folks, you might have to get those flat front chinos somewhere else. Or maybe you already are and that’s why they have to close all these stores. Shoppers are abandoning Gap’s classic looks for stores with trendier options. The chain expects to remove nearly one million square feet from its Old Navy stores by the end of fiscal year 2013 as well. No word on whether Gap’s upscale store, Banana Republic, will be affected by store closings. Continue reading →

Bad Juju: Sex, Blood, and Witchcraft from Africa to the UK

Gawker has an article today about three women who were arrested in Zimbabwe for alleged sexual assault and were found to have 31 condoms – “some with semen” – stashed in a boyfriend’s car. The author appears entirely baffled as to the nature of the crime, but her description of the press coverage as “slightly witch-hunty” is more accurate than she may realize.

Ritualistic sexual assault is actually just one particularly disturbing aspect of the larger phenomenon of witchraft and ostensibly magical practices that are commonly referred to as “juju” and remain widespread even in relatively developed and educated nations such as Zimbabwe. According to a recent study, sperm (in addition to blood, hair, and worse things) is collected for ritual purposes, often by force: Continue reading →