Dog of the Day: A 4-year-old Pekingese named Malachy reigned victorious at the conclusion of this year’s Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, crushing his Dalmatian, German shepherd, Doberman pinscher, Irish setter, and Kerry blue terrier rivals to take home the silver Best in Show bowl.
A few weeks ago I was grumpy for a whole day just because I’m 30 and have not yet managed to acquire a dog. (I prefer mutts, though I’d happily pat this one.)
CRAZILY proud of Lauren who appears in Time this week as an expert in the science of animal friendships! ANIMAL FRIENDSHIPS! Is there anything better to be an expert in? And it’s all thanks to worthless shit.
Back in March 2011, Bovey Castle announced that it had become the only hotel in the UK with an eagle that can be flown by guests…
(via cntraveller)
My best Valentine’s Day was my first one in London: my then-boyfriend and I had made no particular plans, so we went to a generic and cheap Italian restaurant for dinner, on Lamb’s Conduit Street. No one else was there, at all — a bad sign for a restaurant on any Saturday night, but this was Valentine’s Day AND a Saturday night.
This is a bad sign, I leaned in and whispered to my then-boyfriend as the waiter left to put our order — the only order — in to the kitchen.
This restaurant, I said, must be really struggling if we’re the only people here not just on a Saturday night, but on Valentine’s Day.
It’s a good thing we’re here, he said.
Then we ate some risotto and felt beneficent, and I felt neither more in love nor less in love with him than I usually did. Because Valentine’s Day is only good when you don’t need it at all.
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Marriage Suits Educated Women - NYTimes.com
Interesting!
Canada is from the GAP A/W 1999 collection; I purchased her when I came to the painful understanding of how severely I had underestimated the power of a Montreal winter and my lack of power to withstand it. Even as I put her on the first time in the shop and an assistant generously lied that she went well with my jeans, I knew that Canada was a horror.
But a necessary one, accompanying me up and down the salty, crusted streets and softening the landing when my university boyfriend hockey-checked me in to snowbanks, which was apparently a Canadian way of showing affection.
This is a picture of Canada being sported by my friend Olivia; when, in the late months of 2010, Olivia learned that she’d won a fellowship to write in rural New Hampshire for the early weeks of 2011, I solemnly handed Canada over to her: a hideous essential, I explained. With Olivia, Canada was hideous all over the United States (here they’re in Washington State, pointing at Actual Canada). ‘I can’t believe I pulled while wearing Canada,’ Olivia remarked on returning her. (But indeed Olivia did.)
I was glad that Canada could be of real service on Olivia’s American adventure. But I was also hopeful that the hiatus would have broken my Canada habit. Having survived the winter without her, I thought that I could finally retire her to a charity shop.
As if! I wore Canada for the first time in over a year yesterday and was immediately reminded of her ugly allure, her imperviousness to the coldest of London days, of why even my most handsome and fashionable flatmate Ben used to borrow her for quick, cold darts to the Co-op or the gym. And the pleasing effect, when I take her off, that I have lost 50 pounds in a zip and shrug. Even as I see my friends’ faces sink in despair as they see me lumbering towards them in her swathes of grey puff, Canada and I, I realise, will never be parted for good.
The gluttony is not straight up, but rather a side-effect of very good intention, of wishing to fulfill someone’s desire for companionship as they enjoy an evening meal despite the fact that you’ve already had one.
It’s not like it happens all the time. Maybe five times a decade. Each time it does, it comes as a surprise, an unpleasant one: I always forget that I am the kind of person who will do this until I’m actually doing it again.
And as I chew through the second plateful of whatever with something like the weary resignation of someone bound to be the runner-up, but not a quitter, in a pie-eating contest, I find myself thinking: why do I find the pain of over-consumption less daunting than the pain of telling someone that I’ve already eaten, that I’ll just sit and have a glass of wine while they nosh?
And furthermore: what is it like to be the kind of person who would never eat two dinners in one night?
Ah! I completely forgot this picture for my Lauren birthday montage. This is us on one of our most recent adventures, accompanying my parents to the Baltimore Harvard Club Luncheon, where we were pleasingly mistaken - repeatedly - for incoming undergraduates.
Are you also going to Harvard in the fall? said one enthusiastic mother who apparently thought I would make a nice friend for her very-mortified 17-year-old son.
I’m 30, I said.
I like to think that moment will go down in their family history as one of the most embarrassing.
Happy birthday to platonic life partner/companion on weird holidays/maker of monkey threat faces/consistently excellent wedding date Lauren! The best.
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Judge Reinhardt, finding Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional.
Fist pumps at my desk, you guys. Read the whole opinion here.
(via fullcredit)
OK, I feel a little better about America now.
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This is crazy. CRAZY. Next time someone asks me why I don’t choose to live in America, when it’s so exciting there, I think I will show them this.
Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images
Colin Horgan analyses the political meaning of hockey in Canada - and why Stephen Harper is the biggest fan around:
There is a lot one can choose to take from Canada’s past – one full of interesting stories about how this place came to be – but history is there to teach us when we need it, not to be rammed in our faces as part of a moralising search for warped nostalgic national character. Which is effectively what we’re getting – not history, but historical pastiche: a medley of images and myths that are credible only on the basis of their repetition and vaunted placement in skewed narrative that is leaning more toward the political and away from merely just being. It’s not identity or sense of nationhood, it’s political messaging.
Anonymous asked: How would you describe your writing style?
Well, usually I wear an indoor scarf.
Describing my writing style feels rather unnatural. Surely that’s up to the reader? Maybe I write like I’m rushing to finish an undergraduate essay.
I will say that my work as a copywriter has affected my style of writing journalism and fiction, and the way that I think about words. In a good way, I hope.
Madonna ~ Halftime Super Bowl XLVI (dolby surround) (by TheHumanSlinky)
Kevin Spacey in American Beauty voice: Spectacular.
I hope Madonna is feeling good about herself right now.
Dear America, sweet America, America land of the pilgrims’ pride, etc: you are a NATION OF CONTRADICTIONS.
