Are the luckiest sharks of all!

One of Mike Russell’s best yet.

In what is surely the best use of the Internet to date, bookmark the NORAD Santa Tracker and check in on it with your kids on Christmas Eve.

Totally Amazing.

Blog Crush:

Someone over on Live Journal found the cover for the new Star Jones book (new one on the left, old one on the right) that comes out in January and I just had to share. This is the book where she reveals her secrets to finding true happiness and making your life as great as hers. Cause she really does have it all figured out, huh. Sure, she’s obesely fat and would die if she walked the streets of Phoenix for an hour in July, but when she makes a cheesecake, that’s real bacon inside, not the fake stuff. Some people say she’s mean because she wears fur and tricked Ariel out of her singing voice . . .

In case you missed it, today’s front-page Wall Street Journal story on “revirgination” is not to be missed. (Apologies for not being able to link to it.) As it turns out, hymenoplasty is becoming an ever more popular procedure for women who want to experience that wonderful feeling of …

As Jeanette Yarborough explained to WSJ‘s Amy Chozick, “It’s the ultimate gift for the man who has everything.” (And I thought my G4 Powerbook was great!) Esmerelda Vanegas runs a clinic where hymenoplasties take place. But why? “Ms. Vanegas says many of her patients risk disgracing their families if they’re not virgins on their wedding night…. ‘Losing your virginity is like losing a member of your family.'” (Really? I don’t remember crying after I lost my … oh wait a minute, I did.) Vanegas also says that, by undergoing hymenoplasty, “We can make it seem like nothing ever happened.”

Another juicy excerpt: “[A] married mother of two says she’s glad she had the surgery nonetheless. She says her husband wanted to experience intercourse with a virgin.”

Now wait just one minute. Because a woman undergoes hymenoplasty doesn’t exactly make her a virgin. Physically, yes. But in actuality? Only a time machine could do that.

It’s a fascinating and quick read. I tore right through it. David Skinner says he wishes he broke the story.

Okay, just a few more tidbits: It turns out forms of hymenoplasty have been carried out for centuries. Chozick interviewed a director at the Kinsey Institute who said that “midwives used to disguise a broken hymen with a needle and thread, sometimes using membrane material from goa-

The author of this blog item has just fainted and is unable to finish this post.

The Washington Post is rightly outraged by former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s decision to become an adviser for Gazprom. During his tenure in Berlin, Schröder was criticized for his chummy relationship with Vladimir Putin and his downplaying the war in Chechnya and Russia’s suppression of human rights. Adds Davids Medienkritik: “The fact that the company is run by a former East German secret police officer who was close to Putin in his KGB years is truly disgusting.”

Not mentioned, though equally disturbing, is Schröder’s decision to serve on the board of both Zorin Industries (a biotech firm) and the Tropigala casino hotel, alongside former Nevada senator Pat Geary.

The trend continues. The American Association of Plastic Surgery said 1.4 million people underwent depilation procedures last year—twice as many as the year before. This Wilamette Week Online reporter does a very good job of reporting out the story’s local context, in which porno-style hairlessness is opposed only by hippie-bear fetishism of the opposite sort. (He also deserves points for his Matus-like pursuit of every possible pun.) Unrepresented in the feud is anyone who thinks the coming of the hairless man bodes ill for manliness and womanliness—and for men and women’s entwined biological and moral fates. But that’s why you have me.

Galley Reader J.V. sends along a link to this interesting new blog, Potpourri for $500.

Although blogger David Slattery has chosen a strange time to start blogging–he just became a father to an adorable baby girl boy–the blog’s name is so good that it should carry him through periods of light posting.

Plus, he’s got an item up now on spud guns. So he’s got that going for him.