I recently discovered a budding friend of mine knows the “brains” behind purseblog.com. Apparently, this girl blogger pulls down $80k a year while her sole contribution to the world is not-so-witty comments about threading and buckles. So, in the spirit of getting ad revenue to make this site better, here’s a self-evident observation about fashion:

Girl bling is huge, huuuuge in Asia. I saw girls selling produce in dusty towns on the Thai-Burma border sporting diamond playboy bunny logos on chains at the perfect bust-dangling length. While it’s fascinating to pick out foreign fashion amidst the slipstream of global pop culture, we’ve got to step it up, U.S.A.

In the name of patriotism, put some sparkle in your cleavage. For God and Country.

* Dick Cheney smash! [NYT]

* Every good American loves taint. [WP]

* As productive as it is to prevent people in the developing world from using contraceptives, Democrats have another idea. [Roll Call]

* New York is going to be running everything. [Politico]

* The War on Christmas is coming early this year. [Politico]

* Mitt Romney will kill the terrorists himself. [LAT

Thoughts of your impending mortality and the inevitable hereafter don’t usually include any type of plan for your pet’s future happiness – at least not if you’re normal.

If you’re not lucky enough to have a family member/close friend/colleague/benevolent neighbor willing to take care of dear old Spot after you’re dearly departed as a posthumous favor, you might want to check out Consumer Reports’ article on pet trust funds. Yes, pet trust funds. Again, that’s a trust fund. For your pet.

They’ve got everything laid out: how to pick the best trust for you and your pet’s special needs, funding your trust and whatnot. The best part is that you can make your pet and your pet’s trustee do whatever you want them to from beyond the grave, like this lady:

The singer Dusty Springfield reportedly left her cat, Nicholas, to a friend with the instructions that the kitty’s bed be lined with her nightgown, that her recordings be played each night at his bedtime, and that he be fed his favorite imported baby food.

Hey, why not?

Let’s be thankful that Consumer Reports is nonprofit – nobody should be making money off of reporting worthless, inane, frivolous crap. As if pet acupuncture and designer doggie collars weren’t enough for this world, here’s another way to throw away your money and become the model consumer.

Source: Leaving a legacy to your pet [Consumer Reports]

Featured Song: “Queen Bitch” by David Bowie

If our memories serve us correctly, middle school is something very akin to prison.

Middle school administrators seem to be so confused by adolescents that they will go to any lengths to maintain order in their schools. At Kilmer Middle School in Vienna, Va. these lengths include barring students from hand-holding and, god forbid, hugging. The Washington Post reports that a seventh grader at the school has been reprimanded by school officials for putting his arm around his girlfriend at school — this act also required him to leave his assigned seat at lunch.

All touching — not only fighting or inappropriate touching — is against the rules at Kilmer Middle School in Vienna. Hand-holding, handshakes and high-fives? Banned. The rule has been conveyed to students this way: “NO PHYSICAL CONTACT!!!!!

Are they for real? Well, maybe not, as the article later clarifies school officials are sometimes lax in enforcing the policy:

Students won’t get busted if they high-five in class after answering a difficult math problem.

Good. If kids can’t actually touch, at least they can share the high-fiving-inducing joys of mathematics together.

Source: Va. School’s No-Contact Rule Is a Touchy Subject [Washington Post]

Hard labor is not exactly part of Paris’ daily regimen

I’m sure they won’t be but I hope these are the last words I ever write about Paris Hilton. When I was submitting this site to be listed on the DC Blogs live feed, it specifically said not to submit your blog if you write about her and for good reason: she doesn’t matter and the fact that any of us care about her at all reflects something sort of sad about the collective pop culture psyche. Nonetheless, I have to post at least just one more time because I just came across an article that begs the question, “what the fuck is wrong with Los Angeles?”

Obviously, I had no problem with Hilton getting her 45 day sentence. I was surprised in fact, figuring she’d find a way to get out of it and not actually serve any jail time. Just like everyone else, we here at CW thought it was totally fucking retarded when they let her out and felt vindicated when they put her back in. She’s being held in the special celebrity wing of the prison and even though there are these endless reports of how miserable she is, it’s pretty much the equivalent of being locked inside a room at Best Western.

So now I come across this article in the LA Times. Apparently journalists took the time to see if Paris was getting a fair deal or not, and they determined that the 23 days she is going to serve is “much longer” than what most people serve in her situation and that she is being treated unfairly. What exactly is going on over there? By what standard is she being treated unfairly? Because she has to piss where the guards can see her? She’s in a separate fucking wing of the jail, she doesn’t have a cell mate and she meets with her shrink for two hours every single day. What is wrong with these people? She was on parole, she violated it and now she’s going to spend 3 weeks in a jail cell. That doesn’t seem all that unreasonable to me.

The Capitolist is a brand new, hot-looking, anonymous messageboard for hill staffers. We’ll be bored of it by next week, but for right now it’s kind of funny.

Looks like the new White Stripes album Icky Thump is being released on a $99 limited edition USB thumb drive. It’s a cute little thing wearing a hat which you can remove to reveal the USB port thing, after which you can put the album onto your computer and have what you could have gotten for free on slsk.

Here’s the new video: