Auto-Fun of the Day :: 6-5-2008

FYI, our advice column is totally gonna rock! We're going to change people's lives, like Sally Jessie Raphael and Joni Mitchell. Our first installment is coming together as we speak. Keep sending your questions to askautowin@yahoo.com!

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quote: "At a time when increasing numbers of women were demanding the right to take up more space in the world it is no surprise that they'd be hit with the opposite message from a culture that was (and still is) both male-dominated and deeply committed to its traditional power structures. Women get psychically larger, and they're told to grow physically smaller. Women begin to play active roles in realms once dominated by men (schools, universities, athletic fields, the workplace, the bedroom), and they're countered with images of femininity that infantilize them, render them passive and frail and non-threatening. The female body is the place where this society writes it's messages, writes Rosalind Coward in Female Desires. A response to feminism was etched with increasing clarity on the whittled-down silhouette of the average American model: Don't get too hungry, don't overstep your bounds." (Caroline Knapp, "Appetites")

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links:
1) I thought this was a good article, but then I read this: New Yorker Film Critic Anthony Lane Has Female Trouble, and so now I take it back. Per always/often, Jezebel is right ... or, rather, I am wrong. (@jezebel)
2) "Every theory we have about the human world and about the future is vulnerable to the black swan, the unexpected event. We sail in fragile vessels across a raging sea of uncertainty." Fun!: Nassim Nicholas Taleb - the prophet of boom and doom. (@times uk)
3) So You Want to Write a Memoir?: "Make sure your life hasn't already been lived." They've catalogued addictions, trauma, diseases, disorders, family , foodstuffs, religion, upbringing, employment, travel, etc. Really, an extraordinary list ... read it. (@ew.com)

''The bar keeps going higher,'' says Sara Nelson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly. ''Well, you were a drug addict, but did you kill anybody? Well, you killed somebody, but did you do it with your bare hands? Well, you were hungry, but were you as hungry as Frank McCourt? The more that's written, the harder it is to come up with something new or dramatic to say.''

4) Finally a movie-to-musical adaptation that makes sense -- Saved! the musical. (@culture vulture)
5) Fuck SATC -- The entire series of Absolutely Fabulous is now available on DVD. (@afterellen)
6) From "Next-Door Neighbor: A Series of True-Life Webcomix Featuring Today's Best Artists and Writers" - "My Neighbor the Dickhead" by Ed Piskor (@smith magazine)
7) The beauty of shared items -- Alex shared this, then I shared this, then LK shared this -- howevs, I still can't get any of these wallpapers to actually download. Rawr! Desktop Wallpaper Calender: June (@smashing magazine)
8) Three Poems: Focal point of repeated ekphrastic stanza, A least feast, An image play: Center Stage, by Bob Hicok. (@Fou)
9) "Women's Studies" Does the fairer sex need its own instructions on how to do ... everything? (bookslut @the smart set)
10) Illustration from Anne de Renzis