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THE QUOTE
“Let there be work, bread, water, and salt for all.” — Nelson Mandela
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SAHARA IN THE HEARTLAND
Your lawn just took a ten count.
Your trees and bushes, too.
The City of Bloomington has instituted a watering ban, beginning Monday and lasting through October 13th.
Pat Murphy’s Utilities Department water plant pumps are running at about a million gallons a day over capacity, upping the odds that one or more of them will burn out. Not only that, some strains of algae have been observed collecting in the pumps, adding to the risk of failure.
Mayor Mark Kruzan says the ban has some teeth after violators get a first warning: second violations earn $100 fines, three-time losers will be smacked with $250 fines and subsequent violations will lighten scofflaws’ wallets to the tune of $500 each.
By the way, don’t even think about washing your car.
Nope
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THE THRILL OF VICTORY
Ya gotta love Cynthia Plaster-Caster of Chicago. She’s made her mark upon this world in large part (often, very large part) by reproducing rock stars’ cetrioli in plaster castings.
So, it’s no surprise she’s got a fine eye for bulges. The London Olympics is providing her a treasure trove of manly salutes.
Here, she points out the pride and joy of American rower Henrik Rummel as he receives his bronze medal in the heretofore ignored sport:
Henrik Rummel, Front And Center
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Rummel’s isn’t the only full mast in Jolly Old this week. Plaster-Caster also spied Portugal’s Nelson Évora, gold medalist in the triple jump, packing heat.
Nelson Évora, Ready To Go
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If these pix indicate how fab the whole Olympics experience is, it’s no wonder kids work night and day for years trying to get there.
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SHE DOESN’T GET IT
Camilo Gonzalez of Chicago points out that Olympian LoLo Jones is bragging that she’s a virgin.
Jones, the American track and field celebrity, is a flamboyant product endorser. Apparently, one of those products is her heretofore-unseen-by-other-human-eyes genitalia.
She feels the world needs to know how untouched her stuff is so she has tweeted about it.
Oddly, she sometimes adopts seductive poses in her ads. She’s the spokesbody for crap products like Red Bull and planet-rapists like BP
Professional Virgin
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Jere Longman wrote Saturday in the New York Times: “… Jones has received far greater publicity than any other American track and field athlete competing in the London Games. This was based not on achievement but on her exotic beauty and on a sad and cynical marketing campaign. Essentially, Jones has decided she will be whatever anyone wants her to be — virgin, vixen, victim — to draw attention to herself and the many products she endorses.”
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Natch, right wingers and religious fetishists think she’s the greatest thing since the cast stone.
Gonzalez, though, doesn’t think much of it. He writes: “[B]eing a virgin at 30 is weird and pathological. Sexual development is an important part of becoming a grown-ass human being…. We don’t fawn over toddlers who refuse to be potty trained, yet we have respect and some have admiration for someone who is similarly infantile.”
If you’ve heard her on any talk shows, you know there’s more than one organ she refrains from using. Jones appeared on the Tonight Show about a month ago and clearly has a child’s brain as well as a child’s vagina.
Fortunately, Louis CK sat on the couch next to her as she bleated to Jay Leno. Jones has hinted she’d like to date fellow god-maniac Tim Tebow. Louis CK suggested the two should make a video. “That would sell,” he said. He didn’t need to explicate precisely what kind of video it would be.
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LIKE A VIRGIN
As if she needs me pimping for her, here’s Madonna.
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Better yet, here’s Weird Al Yankovic.
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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.
❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.
I Love Charts: From PhD Comics
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❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”
❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.
❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.
❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.
I Fucking Love Science
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❏ Present and Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.
❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.
❏ Mental Floss — Facts.
❏ Caps Off Please — Comics & fun.
❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.
❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.
❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.
❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.
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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.
◗ B-Line Trail — Bloomington Community Band 5K Musical Fun Run/Walk; 7:30am
◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Don Ford; 6-8:30pm
◗ Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center — Workshop: Buddhism in Everyday Life with Ani Choekye; 6:30pm
◗ Monroe County Public Library — Volunteer call for Bloomington bike rack inventory; 6:30-8:30pm
◗ Max’s Place — Open mic; 7:30pm
◗ Boys & Girls Club of Bloomington — Contra dancing; 8pm
◗ The Comedy Attic — Bloomington Comedy Festival, audience vote for funniest person in town; 8pm
◗ The Bluebird — Main Squeeze; 9pm
◗ The Bishop — Stagnant Pools, Mike Adams at His Honest Weight, Kam Kama; 9:30pm
◗ IU Kirkwood Observatory — Public viewing through the main telescope; 10pm
Ongoing:
◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:
- “40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s”; opens Friday, August 3rd, through September 1st
◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:
- Qiao Xiaoguang, “Urban Landscape: A Selection of Papercuts” ; through August 12th
- “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
- Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
- Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
- “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
- David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
- Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
- Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
- “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st
◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:
- Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th
- Coming — Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture; August 24th through September 15th
◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st
◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st
◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break, reopens Tuesday, August 21st
◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibits:
- “What Is Your Quilting Story?”; through July 31st
- Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th
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