Dad sent me this article, with the following message:

"Public Health Metrology" - I could make all sorts of comments, but will restrain myself.

This is what I want to do when I grow up! Human Rights Data Analysis Group. Were there ever a more appropriate combination of words to describe my interests and talents?

Sigh. Most of us are fortunate enough to inhabit safe, friendly communities of our own choosing. However, before you endorse that, we've come a long way baby!, here's a reminder of the everyday awfulness that's still out there (via I Blame The Patriarchy):

A student at the University of New Hampshire wrote a letter to the editor of the school paper complaining about a safe sex poster in her dorm ("To consider the act of sex as a subject/object encounter, as this advertisement does, where a woman's role is to "catch" a man's "pitches," is degrading, disgusting, and completely beyond the type of behavior I expect from an institution of higher learning.") to which students replied in a shockingly violent and offensive manner. Here are some exerpts:

You need to get some phallic power between your legs before you become too uptight to think straight

In my experience, most feminist rage can be assuaged by a prompt deep-dicking.

You sound like you could use a good deepdicking. Here's to the violent destruction of that hymen of yours!

you are a dumb cunt.

UPDATE: jeebus! The link above just gives you the first few lines of the first 10 comments (they're up to about 250 right now). So I took a deep breath and clicked through to read the complete comments (you can only get the first 50 without registering) thinking, at any moment, I'll finally find the comment where someone reacts in horror to the above misogyny. No such luck. Fifty comments, all in agreement, not simply that this woman was overreacting (certainly everyone is entitled to their opinion) but that this woman is any number of derogatory names and in need of any number of violent sexual acts.

The return of the bowling team pictures! Melissa say, "Definitely Christmas card material!"

and yes, I reenacted that scene from The Big Lebowski.

Cheesy holiday sweater time!

Is there something in the air? I need two hands to count the number of friends who have recently lamented (either directly to me in person or via an online post of sorts) about various levels of dissatisfaction in their lives (this includes me too). I don't expect us all to be happy all the time, but sheesh, what's with the downward trend? Previously, I may have written this off as end of semester crap, but my friend group is now diverse enough to include those weird non-student types, so what gives? The holiday season?