We had high hopes for TLC's Feral Children show, but it ended up being less like this:

and more like this:

Still, it was all relevant and cognitive scientastic, so I guess I can't complain. But did you guys have to bring out the wire monkey mothers, too? With the maladjusted monkey geeks avoiding eye contact with the cool monkeys and shuffling toward whatever side of the experimental apparatus most resembled a high school prop closet? Cause that was just upsetting.

well, i promised you reviews of my week of foodieness, and i'm gonna deliver. saturday night tommy, charles, charles' parents and i all went out to dinner at dino in cleveland park, and here follows my report. if you're not interested in reading the full thing, here's a summary: pretty good food, but nothing mindblowing; terrible decor; fairly bad service; great wine prices and selection.

okay, now i'm going to get all dcfoodies on your ass.

in addition to thinking that they have a right to only have to look at scantily clad 90 pound waifs with double D racks...they do this kind of shit and expect us to be okay with it (from the lovely and always hysterical natalia):

men will NEVER realize how fucking weird it is to be a woman.

every time i leave the safety of the heinz school, and i feel like i'm being harassed. forget it, every day of my life i feel like i am harassed in school or out. some men think they fucking own me. i was at a late night fast food restaurant the other day and this guy started talking to me and asking why i was dressed up. i said i just returned from a baby shower. (true.) he said, "oh babies. babies are good. with their strollers, rattles, toys ..." his voice trailed off, but in an effort to make a "joke" he said something about breast pumps and my breasts. something like, "yeah, those suction things you can put on your breasts ... those are cool ..." he said that as he looked at my breasts.

UM.

WTF?

ARE YOU FUCKING DRUNK? YOU ARE TRYING TO PICK ME UP USING A REFERENCE TO A BREAST PUMP?

i was kind of shocked, but played it off. this is the fucking point. you're not supposed to punch people in the face when you're a girl. that's bad! if i had a dollar for every guy that i wanted to (deserved) to be punched in the face, i'd own my own goddamn island by now.

i still chatted with him like he said nothing though. he asked me to party with him and said that i was hot and i probably had good dance moves. i gave him a small chuckle, stupid, curt, smile and took a step back. he and his buddies left. "maybe next time," he said.

yeah, maybe next time i'll actually punch a motherfucker in the face.

i dunno. i often expect men to harass you or say rude things or try to pick you up in disgusting and weird ways. what i don't get is why they are ALMOST ALWAYS shocked when you respond back in a manner that is not all giggly, "oh you're so funny you disgusting repulsive sexist slob, hehehehteehee!" like, they feel like they have a right to say whatever they want to you, and if you take issue with it, you are an uptight biatch. this is more clearly exemplified in a lot of cancer, baby's posts about men telling women to smile. i'm late to the discussion about this, but i come down on the side where i DON'T WANT SOME RANDOM DUDE TELLING ME ON THE STREET TO SMILE. it happens to me all the time. and i know why. it is because i go walking around, unconsciously, with an expression on my face that looks like my pet kitten was just run over and i'm thinking really really hard about how to best castrate the person who did it. it's just my lovely, natural expression. and i'm not going to walk around like a smiley doll to please some passing guy. like cancer, baby says:

I call these men Mood Oglers because the directives they launch at random female strangers accomplish the exact same thing that the actions of their gruffer yet more honest brethren, the Whistlers and Honkers, do: namely, to objectify women. But while the obvious nature of the Whistlers' and Honkers' motivations renders them laughable, the Mood Oglers' more clandestine tactics are maddening. Their behavior implies that women owe all strangers of the opposite sex a wink and a smile because by virtue of their gender they are mere anesthetized decorative objects whose dispositions and facial expressions should be rightfully dictated by the men who just happen to be looking their way. Indeed, when a random male passerby tells a woman that the circumstances of her life can't possibly inspire anything other than the appearance of obliging congeniality, he ignores that woman's humanity -- a humanity that is both capable of experiencing the full spectrum of mortal emotion and that doesn't owe any stranger explanation, concession, or modification.

and the worst part about it all is that i ALWAYS smile for the guy, and when i think about what i would have liked to tell him (something along the lines of "just wait till i shove my shoe up your nostril, THEN i'll be smiling") , i ALWAYS feel bad. and i shouldn't feel bad! why does some stranger feel like he has the right to expect that i should smile on demand? blargh!

sorry for going all feminazi on this site today; i am in fact appreciative of the fact that 99% of the guys i know don't act like these dipshits. but even one interaction with one dipshit is enough to ruin my week.

It looks like Wonkette has linked to my nerd utility belt post, making an already satisfying episode of girlfriend-humiliation into a greater success than I could ever have imagined. So, welcome. If you feel like poking around, adding to our traffic stats, and otherwise boosting our egos, here are some places to start.

• Catherine's masturbating vespa boy story. Nothing tickles the ribs quite like a story involving sex crimes.


• My Da Vinci Code parody. Friends agree: it's all been downhill from here.


• Shark versus Crocodile. Why this failed to take the blogosphere by storm is beyond me.

There. That should last you until you get bored and start another Sodoku. There are also, you know, amazing pictures of Italy, courtesy of Catherine. But linking to those might cost me precious, precious bandwidth, so you'll just have to find them yourself. The links that are clearly featured on the right side of the page, I mean. Just over there, see? Yeah, there you go.

my embarrassment knows no bounds. now that the ENTIRE WORLD KNOWS I AM DATING THE BELT RETARD.

excuse me while i go crawl in a corner and drink straight from a bottle of gin.

I got problems:

• Due to a major security hole in GM 0.3.3, my GreaseMonkey project has been delayed. Nuts. Competition from others within the project proper may derail it -- they're not doing quite the same thing as I am, but they are creating a situation where there are three or four sites that want to be the central repository for all GreaseMonkey scripts, anywhere, ever. Which would be difficult to maintain. I'm hoping when the rubble clears I can just make my database a periodically downloaded version of theirs.


• I've got VNC for the Pocket PC working; I've got SSH for the Pocket PC working; but I can't get VNC working over SSH on the Pocket PC. It craps out about a fifth of the way down the first screen refresh. What's going on? This is kind of a central function of this software.


• On the other hand, Skype has a Pocket PC version available for download. The only catch is that I can't think of any scenario under which Skype would actually be useful for me. Not that that's stopping me from gazing lustfully at bluetooth headsets for no particular reason.


• Our music server resets the sound card's permissions every time it reboots, making it impossible for the jukebox software to work without me logging in and fixing things. Unfortunately I'm too clueless at fixing FC4 to be able to fix this without wading through endless support forums. Sigh.


• And, perhaps most troublingly, I have no fucking idea how this flash game is supposed to be played. I strongly encourage you to try to figure it out. But be forewarned, it has sound (although it doesn't require it).

when did richard roeper decide it was okay to leap from his role as ebert's second-fiddle to pontificater on all things those craaaaaazy women do? including offending him with their fatness?

But the raw truth is, I find these Dove ads a little unsettling. If I want to see plump gals baring too much skin, I'll go to Taste of Chicago, OK? I'll walk down Michigan Avenue or go to Navy Pier. When we're talking women in their underwear on billboards outside my living room windows, give me the fantasy babes, please.

If that makes me sound superficial, shallow and sexist -- well yes, I'm a man. And I'll have to point out that most of the men who appear on billboards and in magazines and on TV commercials are just as genetically blessed as their female counterparts.

his last sentence is the most idiotic part of the whole thing. when only handsome, fit men are on TV and billboards and are the only ones getting starring roles, then i'll gain 50 pounds and go dancing in my underwear in roeper's front yard.

UPDATE: holy crap:

Really, the only time I want to see a thigh that big is in a bucket with bread crumbs on it (rim shot here).

I realize these ads aren't targeted to men. As a matter of fact, I haven't used a firming cream in years. But they are everywhere for everyone (including men) to see -- from L stops to buses to roadside billboards. And they are producing lots of chatter and water cooler talk.

Most men don't like the ads. For them, the ads are just showing a little too much -- literally.

people could argue forever about whether the ads are good or not, if the women are healthy or not, if they're attractive or not, but really - where did this entitled attitude come from? when did these ugly, balding, potbellied men decide that the advertising world - and women - exist solely to serve their desires?

UGH.

(hat tip chicagoist)