The latest romanticizing of blue-collar skills is here: artisanal butchering:

He is one of a handful of young practitioners across the country who are staging bacchanalian “butcher parties,” where they bring whole carcasses — from rabbits to steer — to bars, hang them up, take them apart, and cook them while wide-eyed partyers wash down the resultant meaty snacks with cocktails and beer. In a trend piece, the New York Times called both Farr and Mylan part of a cadre of “Rock Star Butchers,” and Mylan says “dozens” of television producers have approached him about a reality TV series based in his shop. “It’s a fashion trend of the most hollow and irritating sort,” Mylan says. “That sort of hyperbole just doesn’t make sense to me.”

Pro:

“The classes are for the hands-on, face-to-face educational part. The parties are to have fun and to educate people at the same time, but it’s not in a scholastic environment,” he says. “You know, people are doing shots.”

Con:

But this, according to Mylan, is exactly the problem. “It’s kind of sending a message like, animals are like strippers, or animals are like whores.”

Meathead fad? The rock star butcher

Remember when all the jobs went to Mexico and then to China?

H. R. 4759: To provide for the withdrawal of the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement.

via Daily Paul

A mother recounts her visions of killing her own children:

My son, who was 6, was sitting in the living room, and I was standing in the doorway. We were laughing and talking about the movie he was watching, when it first happened. I suddenly had an image of stabbing him. It only lasted about a second, but it literally almost knocked me off my feet. … My daughter wanted to try on her glow in the dark pajamas, so we went in her room and turned the lights off. When the lights went off, I had the sudden urge to bash her head into the wall.

via I am a mother who had homicidal impulses towards her children

From The Progressive Puppy:

An 18-year-old lesbian high school student is challenging a Mississippi school district policy that says no same-sex date at the senior prom.  Constance McMillen has enlisted the help of the American Civil Liberties Union after the district refused to let McMillen and her girlfriend arrive as a couple at the April 2 prom.  District officials also denied McMillen’s request to wear a tuxedo.  At issue is a memo issued to the Itawamba County high school students that laid out the criteria for bringing a date to the prom, and one requirement was that the person must be of the opposite sex.

via Mississippi School Wants Lesbian Student Excluded From Prom.

Oh Jeffersonville, nobody does it like you:

The parents of a Kentuckiana seventh grade student say their young daughter was suspended from school for doing exactly what she’s been taught to do for years – to just say no to drugs. The girl did not bring the prescription drug to her Jeffersonville, IN school, nor did she take it, but she admits that she touched it and in Greater Clark County Schools that is drug possession.

Another Dumbass School Official Story

I like the part where being gay is worse than drunk driving. From Metafilter:

It’s one thing to loathe yourself (and a sign of mental illness if it’s over something that isn’t shameful, like being gay–hell, that’s like hating yourself because you ended up “too short” or “too tall”). It’s another to loathe others like you despite their accepting and celebration of the thing you hate, and actively work to make their lives miserable. That takes a psychopath.

via MetaFilter

Mo’nique referenced Hattie McDaniel in her Oscar speech. Hattie was the first black actor to win an Oscar, winning the award for best supporting actress in 1939 for Gone With The Wind. McDaniel has 2 stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for her work in film and one for her work in radio (she was the first black woman to sing on the radio in the United States). She’s an original American badass. Here’s her Oscar speech:

YouTube – Hattie McDaniel – Oscar win speech.

Mo’nique was dressed in a blue dress, with gardenias in her hair. She said this was in homage to McDaniel, who wore the same thing to the award ceremony in 1939.

Ouch:

After [mentions] that Greece sell off islands, historic buildings and artworks before receiving aid, the German tabloid Bild has written an open letter to the Greek prime minister George Papandreou: ”

You’re in Germany. Here, people work until they are 67 and there is no 14th-month salary for civil servants. Here, nobody needs to pay a €1,000 bribe to get a hospital bed in time. Our petrol stations have cash registers, taxi drivers give receipts and farmers don’t swindle EU subsidies with millions of non-existent olive trees. Germany also has high debts but we can settle them. That’s because we get up early and work all day. We want to be friends with the Greeks. That’s why since joining the euro, Germany has given your country €50bn.”

via Get up earlier, Germans tell Greeks

Found on Reddit:

SWAT team busted into a house, shot two dogs — including a corgi, for crying out loud — in full view of a 7 year old child, and found…a little pot in the house

via Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Awful:

Sarah Burge has made a minor name for herself by turning herself, via plastic surgery, into the “Real Life Barbie.” Yet Burge has seemingly tired of “improving” her own image, and has now moved on to her 16-year-old daughter, Hannah.

via Just Because You Can Inject Your 16-Year-Old With Botox, It Doesn’t Mean You Should