The always hilarious guys from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia have yet another amazing product to share with the American public: THE DICK TOWEL! See… it's a towel… with a dick on it… and… and… ummm… yeah. Just watch the video. Language NSFW! Headphones up!

Wait… you can actually order this thing.

I agree with Mother Jones: Linger, an "internal feminine flavoring" mint—an Altoid for your twat—sounds like a terrible product. Linger mints are merely repacked breath mints that come in an ugly tin with a jacked-up price. MJ:

A little digging revealed that Linger is made/distributed by a company called Admints, which just happens to make trade show mints. And the Linger samples just happen to have have the exact same shape, taste, and ingredients as Admint's sample mints.... And if you actually do expect to use Linger to "flavor the woman in a manner that is safe and effective," be warned: its primary ingredient is sugar, which is not safe for the vagina. It messes up the pH and can lead to a really painful yeast infection, a condition that definitely doesn't make someone want to "linger."

However... I don't think the "Linger" concept can be dismissed as some sort of anti-vag, anti-lady-bits plot. A lot flavored condoms and flavored lubes and chocolate-flavored sex lotions are sold to women who think dick tastes nasty and can't be bothered to acquire a taste for the unadulterated dick. It seems only fair that some sort of twat-flavoring product—vag-safe, of course—come to market for straight guys and the odd—very odd—lesbian who can't be bothered to acquire a taste for unadulterated lady bits.

...doesn't reduce the number of abortions.

Restricting the availability of legal abortion does not appear to reduce the number of women trying to end unwanted pregnancies, a major report suggests. The Guttmacher Institute's survey found abortion occurs at roughly equal rates in regions where it is legal and regions where it is highly restricted.

Banning abortion only makes abortions more dangerous and kills women—which is what many opponents of abortion are after, really. They want people who have sex to be punished. Seventy-thousand woman die every year as a result of unsafe abortions in countries where abortion is illegal. So let's just say it, shall we? American opponents of reproductive freedom—people who seek to ban abortion—are trying to kill American women. The end.

Guess what does reduce the number of abortions? Improved access to contraception.

I also can't believe pro-life cupcake day exists.

• The Hidden Bookcase

I don't understand why this is happening. Not that I have any real attachment to the Sweet Valley High books (I am embarrassingly versed in the particulars of the universe, but let's be honest, I only read them because as a second grader, they were the raciest books I could get my hands on)—but doesn't the existence of Gossip Girl, The OC, and, well, contemporary teen culture, kind of render these books obsolete, even if they DO get a trashy punk rock makeover courtesy of Diablo Cody?

I'm firmly if predictably entrenched in the Diablo backlash camp, but it's possible that I'd feel more warmly about this project if I hadn't read about it first on Jezebel, whose post sets a new standard for obliviously off-putting writing:

Maybe it's because I grew up in New York. Or maybe it's because I read Anais Nin and Kurt Vonnegut at an early age. Or perhaps I just always chafed against "All-American" high school depictions in books and movies, since many key staples of the genre: Suburbs! Dates! Sports! Cars! Everybody's white! seemed a little boring, a wee retro and rather narrow-minded to me.

She is so totally Stacey!!!1!! And being more of a Kristy myself, I kind of want to punch her in the face. But BSC-themed threats aside, I don't share Jezebel's conviction that what Sweet Valley really needs is a "fresh look." The Wakefields are lumped in with Nancy Drew in my mind, ridiculously wholesome even when they're being "bad," and plopping them into a contemporary teenage milieu doesn't seem to offer even a slight possibility of updating the characters in an interesting way. I'd frankly rather see a period piece that plays up the kitschy naivete of that era (a la The Brady Bunch movies) than another entry in the kids-today-are-slutty-and-mean genre. But damn if I'm not going to see it anyway—my friend Miranda (hat tip!) put it succinctly: "I am excited and resentful and annoyed."

"In some parts of the country, you still get dirty looks if you breastfeed in public. But in Portland, not so much," said lactation consultant Peggy Andrews, RN, looking over a map of human breast milk banks in the United States. Portland is poised to become the 11th city to host a breast milk donor center, providing bottles of "liquid gold" to babies and other patients in need.

Portland's milk bank at Southeast Portland Adventist hospital is still humble—the freezer that will hold bottles of milk was empty this morning and Andrews needs $125,000 in pasteurization and computer equipment to really get the project off the ground. Currently, any milk donated in Portland is wrapped up in an air mail package and shipped to the closest breast milk bank, in San Jose, where it's pasteurized and then shipped out again around the country. All that jetplaning raises the cost of of breast milk to $4.50 an ounce. Last year, the San Jose milk bank shipped 250,000 ounces of breast milk around the west coast.

• Tasty ounces of liquid gold: one mom's catch from her first day of lactating.

Still no luck (or maybe just another hurdle) for Savage Love readers who want to make their own breast milk cheese: people can only obtain milk from the donor center with a prescription. Even babies need prescriptions to get a taste of someone else's breast milk, though people who have weakened immune systems (like cancer and transplant patients) can also be prescribed breast milk to help rebuild their bodies.

Lots more info below the cut!

Neither did I, until I bought this amazing book 1000 Extra/Ordinary Objects at a junk sale. I've never found such an educational procrastination tool.

The text reads:

This water balloon looks innocuous until you read the description:

WTF?! That sounds made up, right? I hope so, otherwise everyone in our throwing-water-balloons-at-trackstanders contest could have scored at least 15 or so years in Burmese prison.

Oh, also, the book has the most disturbing condom EVER SEEN BY HUMAN EYES on its back cover. That's below the cut.

Okay, fine! Perhaps we don't share the same sense of humor when it comes to pedophilia. (Well, excuuuuuuse ME!) However, I think we can all agree that "breasts" are ALWAYS hilarious! Check out this commercial for Kush, the only product I know of that satisfies a woman's deep need to have something soft and cylindrical in between her funbags.

A tip o' the D-cup to BWE!

Ladies, I understand that you are not like men. Sometimes it takes TIME for you to… you know… get your motor running. And, since I'm fairly busy at the moment, I thought that maybe you can get your OWN motor running… with a little help from Fabio.
In the following video from Everything is Terrible, Fabio is a rogueish fancy pirate who hates women—no, he LOVES women! But what he really loves is a woman who loves her meat. Eat it, lassie. EAT THE MEAT FOR FABIO!!

Motor running yet?

As reported earlier this week on Good Morning News, it was revealed in a study by Men’s Health that Portland was one of the most depressed cities in the US. Today a “study” released by Combos® Brand Snacks, has named Portland one of least manly cities in the country. “The official cheese-filled snack of NASCAR” (as opposed to the official non-cheese-filled snack of NASCAR, which is pork rinds, obviously), conducted the study in association with Sperling’s Best Places.

I think most Portland residents, upon hearing the news, would look around them, shrug and say something like, “Meh. I guess that makes sense.” At least, that was my reaction. But one has to wonder… Is there any link between lack of manliness and depression?

Let’s look at what the cheese-filled snack people used as criteria for manliness:

number of professional major league sports teams, popularity of tools and hardware and frequency of monster truck rallies.

Also, cities lost manly points for:

the abundance of home furnishing stores, high minivan sales and subscription rates to beauty magazines

You got us there Combos® Brand Snacks. You nailed it. I guess we can’t grow our beards long enough to cover the shame of our femininity. We would shake our tiny lady fists at you if we weren’t so depressed. But really, we’re quite comfortable with our sensitivity. Now if you'll excuse us, we have an indie film to watch about an emotionally stunted man-child, right after we finish reading this confessional graphic novel about someone as depressed and emasculated as we are.

Alright. Alright. Snap out of it. I just happen to be wearing my cowboy boots today, which is a good thing considering that I’m surrounded by bullshit.

I think that the Crap-Filled-Crap® snack brand should update their definition of manly. Monster truck rallys? The 1980’s called and they want their mullets back… also, their ridiculous snacks. And they want them by Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

I do think the city could use a bit more manliness—I mean, Timber Jim can’t support us all—but how could that be accomplished? If there were any credence to this obviously tongue-in-cheek promotional study (if it were conducted by Nabisco, well that’d be different), what do you think would remedy the situation? Would a remedy be necessary? Should we ask A-Rod to come to town and stand in Pioneer Square to act as a kind of testosterone salt-lick? Should we have more bare-knuckled, JCVD-style street fights? Drive more pick-ups?

What do you think, Blogtownies? Does Portland need to grow a pair?

The whack psuedo-science of cosmetics has always really irked me. You know, the shampoo commercials that promise to infuse your hair with "strengthening protein" while animated DNA strands swirl into sexy, swishy locks? This is what my shampoo tells me, irritatingly, while I read the back of the bottle in the shower: "I'll fight for your right to smooth hair with my nourishing formula with anti-frizz potion fused with mandarin balm & pearls." And my conditioner says its "fused with pearls and coco mango." Coco mango? Pearls? Potions? WTF? They are not even being discreet about making up ingredients.

And then all of a sudden locally-made feminist mag Bitch this month has an article about how shampoo psuedo-science isn't just bunk, it's downright dangerous. It frames the lack of regulations on cosmetic ingredients as a women's health issue, one that's being ignored by the FDA. Check it out:

Makeup menaces are nothing new: Some Elizabethan enchantresses died for their love of white lead-laced face powder, and Victorian vamps used deadly nightshade to lend their eyes an alluring glow. But today, when a $50-billion cosmetics industry has replaced apothecaries and home brewers, we expect the FDA to protect the public from dangerous beauty aids. Yet while its name might lead us to think otherwise, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act gives the FDA far more regulatory power over food additives and drugs than over cosmetics; the agency isn't authorized to approve cosmetic products or ingredients before they hit the shelves.

Which means that shampoo, mascara, deodorant can all contain shit like mercury and carcinogens. In a study done on lipstick last year, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found that one-third of lipsticks they analyzed had more lead in them than is allowed in candy.

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED

Of course, Bitch points out that the cosmetic companies have found a great way to make money off the potentially lethal qualities of some of their products: by making ritzy OrganicNaturalEcoGreenSustainable shampoo, etc, that promises to totally not kill you. But seriously, it's ridiculous that I have to choose between buying either a deodorant that probably gives me cancer or one that's made of basically moss.

They may not get the votes, but the Republicans do have an army of 11 year old girls that can field strip and reassemble an AR-15 rifle in less than a minute. I don't think the Democrats have that.

This happened two weeks ago (which I think makes it what, 156 in blog years?), but I just saw it and so I'm reposting case anyone else missed the absolutely excruciating culture collision that was the Jezebel girls appearing on Daily Show co-creator and HuffPo blogger Lizz Winstead's Drinking and Thinking.

Ho-ly shit. Watch the videos here and then get back to me.

Now, I don't have much patience with Winstead's insistence that the Jezebel writers are "role models for young women everywhere," and as such have a responsibility to act in a manner that is..... Wow, I fell asleep while typing that sentence, and had a tiny dream about pancakes.

But damn, do things get ugly. The first clip isn't too bad; their jokes aren't great, but I can certainly understand the temptation to make them, particularly when Winstead starts getting all sanctimonious about birth control. (It would be rad if the 3rd wave could talk to the 2nd without sounding like a bratty teenager trying to provoke her mom, but whatever, I get it. Personal to my mom: I ASKED YOU NOT TO READ BLOGTOWN. PLEASE STOP. Why can't you trust me enough to respect my privacy?)

But Tracie's comments about how, you know, she's like, just too smart to get raped, really... No editorializing on those is even necessary (and damn is it hard to listen to her talk. I get the whole Kathleen Hanna/VGI aesthetic, but the word "intelligentsia" is pretty operative). It's basically the new-media equivalent of Britney Spears getting out of a car.

I'm turning in my feminist card. I don't like any of you people any more. (Does this mean I can't read Fine Lines anymore? But it's Friday...)