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SAW GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY AND IT WAS ADORABLEEEEEEE. But I also WEPT during the mom parts, because moms! Have you seen it yet? What was the most adorable part for you? Also, I have been angry at Chris Pratt over this since it happened, but I felt so warmly maternal to his character as a result of mom part (likely related to personal news lower in link roundup) that I have…slightly softened towards him.

Oh, and I know characters always get all emo about it, but if anyone wants to turn me into a human weapon via body modifications and several years of brutal training, after which I will be hard as STONE emotionally and physically and able to kill at will, I am there for it! I will sign up! I will NEVER cast aspersions on your beautiful gift. Thank you in advance.


My extremely difficult–yet rewarding–friend Josh wrote this screed against honeydew melon, and I, for one, am happy the New York Times allowed him to investigate the matter:

But there’s a major downside to serving honeydew: Americans don’t like to eat it. In 2012, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, Americans consumed five pounds of cantaloupe for every pound of honeydew. We go for cantaloupe even though it’s, on average, 50 percent more expensive than honeydew. Because of that preference, honeydew-cantaloupe parity on breakfast buffets means a lot of honeydew waste.

“I trashed more mass in honeydew than in unfinished stacks of pancakes,” says Dawn Eisner, who supervised a breakfast buffet at the Radisson Plaza in Kalamazoo, Mich., for six years, ending in 2011. “Nobody eats the green melon.” So why even serve it? “It looks nice next to watermelon, cantaloupe and pineapple,” she said.


A LONG INTERVIEW WITH WERNER HERZOG.


Poutine.


I’ve been hearing a ton about Ariel Schrag’s new book, Adam, which I also have galleys of, and the topic initially caused me to do a side-head tilt, so it’s been really interesting to see thoughtful interviews and essays about it, and I’m gonna give it a shot.


Dr. Willie Goddamn Parker for Everything, PREPARE FOR THE LONGEST BLOCKQUOTE OF YOUR LIFE AND THEN DONATE:

Many of these women come from hours away, one from a little town on the Kentucky border that’s a seven-hour drive. They don’t know much about Dr. Parker. They don’t know that he grew up a few hours away in Birmingham, the second youngest son of a single mother who raised six children on food stamps and welfare, so poor that he taught himself to read by a kerosene lamp and went to the bathroom in an outhouse; that he was born again in his teenage years and did a stint as a boy preacher in Baptist churches; that he became the first black student-body president of a mostly white high school, went on to Harvard and a distinguished career as a college professor and obstetrician who delivered thousands of babies and refused to do abortions. They certainly don’t know about the “come to Jesus” moment, as he pointedly describes it, when he decided to give up his fancy career to become an abortion provider. Or that, at fifty-one, having resigned a prestigious job as medical director of Planned Parenthood, he’s preparing to move back south and take over a circuit roughly similar—for safety reasons, he won’t be more specific—to the one traveled by Dr. David Gunn before an antiabortion fanatic assassinated him in 1993. Or that his name and home address have been published by an antiabortion Web site with the unmistakable intent of terrorizing doctors like him. Or that he receives threats that say, “You’ve been warned.” Or that he refuses to wear a bulletproof vest, because he doesn’t want to live in fear—”if I’m that anxious, they’ve already taken my life”—but owns a stun gun because a practical man has to take precautions. What they do know is this:

He is the doctor who is going to stop them from being pregnant.


Ask a man.


The fetus in my uterus appears to have masculine reproductive organs. I demanded a recount, of course, but have accepted that I must have chosen to ignore my Bene Gesserit training and bring forth the Kwisatz Haderach.


I had originally dumped all of Roxane Gay’s relevant tweets on the Best Buy incident into this roundup, but then, of course, she wrote very beautifully and horribly about it (and the extraordinary committment of racism apologists to denying the racism of the incident in question), and here it is:

All the while, I was on Twitter because I was so frustrated. I was kind of vague about what I was buying and later this would become a Thing because people are the worst. I was being vague because I was embarrassed to be 39 years old, buying a Play Station. I felt guilty for being so consumeristic. I am struggling with no longer being broke all the time and what that allows me to do. I was also feeling awkward because I only use my Play Station 3 to watch movies and Netflix and play Lumines so the purchase felt extra ridiculous.  (As an aside, this makes my brothers so mad and I like that part.) There’s no fucking conspiracy here. I just didn’t feel like telling the Internet what I was buying.
Meanwhile, in the store, the young man kept requesting the salesperson who made my sale on the intercom. This went on for quite some time. He continued to ignore me. During this entire exchange, I don’t think he said a single word to me. It was like I wasn’t even there.
The salesman finally came to the front of the store and verified  I had indeed made this purchase. He pointed to the video game and said, “That is on the receipt,” and the young man said, “I know, but…”
Let me repeat: My receipt was not good enough.
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