Here are the signing ceremonies for two of the most important women’s rights-related bills in recent history: the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in 2003 and the Lillie Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009.

The bottom photo makes me think of sisterhood-is-powerful rainbows and sparkle Gobama ponies. The top photo makes me wonder where I stashed my dick-slicing knife.

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Oh, if only. Isn’t this straight where you’d head with a fat novel and a cool compress after jailing your dogs for barky-barky yapcrimes?

Yeah. Me, too.

From Design Sponge via Ffffound.

I know who I’ll be listening to this morning.

Here, a baby John, circa 1973, covers the Skip James classic Devil Got My Woman, with an insistently lopey beat and a honeyslide moan (plus a little early seventies space, for all the heads out there):

He’ll be missed.

Got the sad news via IM from Elastic Heart. Saw the video at enthusiasm.

The residents at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo are enjoying their first snowfall of the year way more than I’ve been enjoying my tenth.

Even the flamingos can hang, thanks to their heated wading pool (it’s just like hot-tubbing in the mountains!):

Everyone’s having fun except for this fellow:

Red Panda, come sit by me. We can bitch about winter while those cheerful sorts frolic.

Fantastic shots by Mehgan Murphy of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. See more here. And oh dear lord, they have a BABY GORILLA!

Sorry. This just made me laugh, because it is SO TRUE.

In my early days in San Francisco, I lived right on the parade route for Cinco De Mayo and Carnevale, and we used to dress scantily and drink heavily, always jumping in when a particularly riotous samba band or inviting conga line passed by. Inevitably, you’d rub up against some sort of glitter-painted faun or fairy in the mad throb, and let me tell you what, that shit is more persistent than any memory or stalker or viral infection.

In fact, I think it enters you like a sparkle parasite, occasionally sending starry scouts to the surface, just to catch the light. There you’d be in the drear of winter, months after parade season, and you’d look down and see that tell-tale wink of gold!silver!purple!blue! somewhere; another glittering reminder of wilder times excreted from your now-hidden flesh.

Or maybe there’s just no inoculation against the fabulous in San Francisco. Maybe the spirit of all those naked asses on Mission Street lives within us forever, with the occasional glint of glitter to remind us to shake our own from time to time.

Thanks for the laugh and the look back, Because Studio!

We really are living every week like it’s shark week around here. Have you noticed all the shark fins breaking water lately?

Imagine a shark appearing in your split pea soup:

This shark fin soup bowl, designed by Apostolos Porsanidis, is available at Industreal.

Really wake yourself up in the morning with a Sharky tea infuser, designed by Pable Matteoda:

Fantastic! You’d need a little red tea for the best effect.

Or how about a shark attack in your sapphire and tonic? Give your drinks more bite with shark fin ice cubes:

Soup bowl discovered on the ever-inspiring Monster-Munch. Thanks for the infuser hat-tip, NotCot. Pix are via. Ice cube trays seen all over the place, but pix are via

Here’s my new food-boyfriend on the perfect poached egg:

The money shot is at the end. I watched it twice. Yum.

Right: 3 eggs, a healthy hunk of butter, on and off the heat, half tablespoon of creme fraiche, season at the end. Gordon Ramsey shows us how to cook the perfect scrambled eggs (and yes, I’ve been doing it all wrong):

I know this guy’s on the TV, and he’s supposed to be quite a yeller, but I find him very good company, at least in 4-minute doses. He can make me brekkie any day.

And there you go, I am now blogger number eight hundred and eleven to use that heading to remember to John Updike, who died today of lung cancer at age 76.

This is a poem I remember from my early days as a reader of his, back when my first love gave me an 80’s trade paperback version of Museums and Women, and I fell for the beautifully wrought prose of “I am Dying, Egypt, Dying” and other stories.

While I’ve always loved his meticulous metaphors, his densely-packed descriptions, I remain especially fond of this tiny verse, for its playful wit and reminiscent reverb. It takes me back to when I was the smallest known star in the universe, all leggy hope and possibility, discovering myself in words and men and great cities.

Readers will recognize the page, but not the year, perhaps. This was from 1962, and it seems a fitting way to say goodbye.

Alex Katz portrait via, poem via.

I suggest we disobey the speed limit.

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