In March, 1973, I spent a week of great weather photographing kids and streetscapes in the southernmost part of South Baltimore, where Light Street ends and a complex of old warehouses and railroad yards begin. Or at least that was the scene then. These days the area has been gentrified somewhat and many of the warehouses are now apartments and condos. (The railroad yards are still there, now owned by CFX.) I saw the group of kids pictured here on several different occasions. It was always the same girls and boy; and the boy, to quote from an unpublished story of mine about city kids, seemed to be the "leader in charge.” The girls, meanwhile, usually appeared distracted, or—perhaps a better way to put it—self-absorbed in the classic "tween" girl group manner. They laughed and chatted while paying scant attention to me, if that. The boy stood off to one side, serious (he never smiled at me, just stared), hyper-alert, protective, as if he were on sentry duty. I came to think of the group in dramatic terms, as a family, a tribe, or perhaps an encampment of gorilla fighters hiding out in the mountains. Romantic ideas aside, I composed the image with the boy foregrounded, as dominate in the frame as he appeared to me to be in his relationship with the girls, and I was careful to include enough of the background buildings to give a feeling for the industrial character of the area. To provide more context to this layout I’ve added two other images of the “campsite,” made on the same day. I don't know what those huge metal cylinders are, but since the neighborhood is only blocks from the harbor, I figure they may be buoys. (Click on any of the images for larger views.)

They had an amazing clown there named Glitter.  She did really good balloon animals but her face painting was just amazing.  They were full face "mask" type paints, and looked really good.  Kaleigh and Maddy wanted to be cats, and Lauren chose a butterfly.  Here they are:

Of course, we had to wash it all off last night, but by then I think they were tired of it.  And yes, the guy with the cat met us there.  She was pretty stinky when we got her but a bath took care of it, and made her look like a poor little drowned rat.  The girls are in love, and since it's Maddy's cat, she just has such a sense of pride about her.  Brownie HATES her.  She hisses and runs away every time she sees her.  This morning when I got up, the poor little kitten was on the steps and Brownie wouldn't let her go down.  I bet in a few days they are the best of friends. 

Oh, and her name is Tinkerbell.  Tink, for short.  We are already in love.  :)

So where did I stop? Yes, birthday parties. War of sexes was as frequent as uncalled rains between interesting cricket matches or should I compare it with sledging in aussie-indo matches? Then the things were about to take a dramatic twist, teenage was on the doorstep and man that was an inescapable trap of nature.

Suddenly we started getting softer on girls, no matter how hard we tried to steal a sight of those long golden locks amidst other boys, who probably were doing the same fearing us, we could hardly evade the suspicion of the mates; forget about the girls. But I had to maintain the dignity of being the head of the club, so I was at least a kilometre away from girls. But there is a limit for everyone’s abstinence and I broke down to the trap laid by the destiny.

I still remember the day when I was seated next to a cute girl; I guess she was of my age! Since in that period I had little knowledge to assess girls, what attracted me in her was her long hairs. Highly contrasting to my previous presumptions, now long hairs looked cute. Longer they were, cuter they seemed to me.

I badly wanted to see this movie. I had heard good reviews from my friends. They had already seen it in last week. I was left alone ‘coz of my crashing grades. At last after a weeklong persuasion and toil, I finally became victorious in emotionally blackmailing my mom.

As I walked over to the counter I found myself stuffed in a big queue where everyone seemed at least 4 foot taller than me. Or was it just my exaggerating imagination? I still don’t know; and I don’t care because that not what was more important.

Finally I made it to the counter where another young man, may be a few years older to me, politely asked me for the show name. I bought the tickets and strolled into the hall. It was dark; of course it is suppose to be dark isn’t it? Well there was still three minutes before the movie could start. I put the popcorn and coke in the place provided on the seat handle and adjusted the chair one last time. Suddenly there was this voice from my adjoining seat; “can‘t you just take your hands off my hair? It’s hurting!”

Oh sorry! And just as I turned to apologise I couldn’t help but stare at this girl. Even in the dim light of the theatre her beauty was unmatched. I could speak for one second and then suddenly this word popped out of my mouth- s...or…ry! I sat back on the chair. I couldn’t concentrate on the movie. I felt the urge to slap myself. How could I? Yuck! Girls suck! I tried to remind myself about my stature.

Was I suffering from some kind of disease? I was petrified and confused at the same time about this unnoticed change in my attitude.

Cue old people style reminiscence: I remember when I first heard about the straight girl-on-girl phenomenon. I was at a writers' colony, working on my novel Younger, and left for the day to visit my twentysomething nieces Kimberly and Katie. Over dinner, I grilled them about what life was like for young women these days, and they told me about date rape drugs, and digital romance, and dressing professionally in the age of Paris Hilton.

And then one of them said, very casually, "Oh, and of course there's the thing about girls making out with other girls." That's the point at which I spilled my Cosmo and my eyes popped out of my head and landed on the table. Yes, K & K informed me. It had become fairly standard for girlfriends to suck face (they didn't use that term; I heard it in On Golden Pond) as part of the evening's entertainment, to amuse onlooking guys as well as themselves.

Well, blow me down. When I went back to the writers' institution colony and told this tale, the other middle-aged poetry scribblers were as shocked as I was. But a young woman who taught at a Southern college knew all about the new faux lesbians. "All my female students do it," she said. "It's especially popular among the pledged virgins."

I wrote it into the book, and I've been on the lookout for casual girl-on-girl action ever since, though it still doesn't seem to have hit my suburban New Jersey neighborhood. But if you're in a bar in the city and you see two girls kissing passionately, don't be shocked or assume they're lesbians. And next time you're feeling affectionate toward another mom in your book group or your BFF, you might consider forgoing the peck on the cheek and slipping her a little tongue.

呀妹身形好okay，有前有後。長頭髮，方字面形，唔算靚但幾Q。幾重鄉音，佢話佢係上海人wor。

頭part我叫佢剩係按腳，但麻麻地。按按下就變左坐向床邊同我傾計。此時我見佢都幾大胸，就伸手摸下，嘩，乜個bra咁硬既？唔通係假波？跟手摸下大脾，唔幾滑。整整下佢問我做乜，我話做大啦。

息燈除衫。嘩，對野係堅既，重好挺，好大，好彈手，好香，好好啜。真係玩唔停。妹妹摸落算細，好快有水。首先女上男下，緊窄度都算okay，估唔到係嘉記做左4年都重keep到。磨左差不多十分鐘，見佢開始有D汗，就轉做男上女下。嘩，佢目訓向到個對野重正。我輕輕咁玩波有搾腰掃腿，郁下有停下又搖下，大概5至10分鐘就完事了。

之後因為歸心此箭，所以透一陣就走了。埋單千二。呢條女一定要返cheuk！

If you think I'm a new dude on the block, you're mistaken. I've been around here for ages. MAN ON THE MOON and me are like Big Boi and Andre 3000. Even on this blog, I've been working with my homeboy for weeks now, trying to tighten up every line, just to be able to reach that level of EPIC DEPTH.

And those of you who don't believe that me and MAN ON THE MOON are just here to entertain and educate, you're fucking right. As if we want you kids to learn while you're playing with us, bhenchod. You're right. We have a radical agenda. We want all you kids who are getting into college this year to leave behind the rules of right and wrong which you've burdened yourself with all these years. Breathe freely. Absorb. Rebel. Make your own rules. Don't stereotype anything. Do everything. Thrash Metal. Hardcore Gangsta Rap. The best weed from Himachal. Girls. Boys. Everything. Experiment. Live. And if you're lucky enough to end up at the university me and my moonboy call home (we aren't telling you where yet) we can teach you how to let yourself out and let it all in. Greetings. We bring knowledge.

Views More Pictures at http://quatmo.info

Views More Pictures at http://quatmo.info

Views More Pictures at http://quatmo.info

Views More Pictures at http://quatmo.info

Views More Pictures at http://quatmo.info

Views More Pictures at http://quatmo.info

Views More Pictures at http://quatmo.info

Hey there,

So i'm Lilou! I'm best friends with Lee and Lea, and as you know, we all LOOOOVE playing games for girls. But the thing is we all love different types of games, which is why we've got this blog. Between us we can cover every type of game!

My passion is cooking, so i love playing cooking games for girls! But there are loads of different types - waitressing games, cooking games, baking games, cake decorating games.

Check out the links to all my fav cooking games, and maybe I'll see you there!

Lilou xxx

p.s. don't forget to sign up so you can join the forums! xxxxxxxxxx

Hey guys, this is Lea. Thought I'd drop you all a message to say who I am!

I know we all wrote about how we love playing games for girls, but I'm the real dress up games girl. I'm a total fashion victim. I love dressing up in peoples clothes, and playing dress up games for girls on the internet.

Theres loads of free games out there. I put my fav link for dress up games into the links at the side. Check it out!

Love Lea xxxxxxx

"The robot brain, for want of a better word, was played lots of punk, reggae, disco and classical and over a period of time the robot has learned to recognise and appreciate the patterns of sound in punk music," he said.

The neural network understands the music in a similar way to a human brain, breaking down the sound into a series of frequency bands.

Programmer Jons Jones Morris said: "Breaking down the sound produces a map of the audio over time which is turned into an image. That image is submitted to one of the neural networks."

Punk fans can dance alongside the pogoing robots.

Using this "adaptive resonance theory", the neural networks begin to build up a history of different patterns relating to different sounds.

...The robot reacts to the level of "punk" in the song.

The more punk it believes the song is, the more it pogos in a "happy and frenzied way", said Professor McOwan.

But the last big broo-har that got everyone pogo-ing in a different way was one I personally witnessed over the reporting of research on TV. This happened when I was at the Australian Skeptics special convention at Wagga Wagga in April, where quite a few fellow attendees had some words to say to Dr Paul Willis about this televised report:

One of the changes sweeping through our society this century is that women are having fewer children, later in life. That may explain why the use of IVF to assist pregnancy is growing by up to 15% a year in Australia.

But experts say that science and technology has reached a plateau, and improvements in the success of these fertility treatments may only come from entirely different medical traditions – like acupuncture.

Mark Horstman travels to Beijing and Adelaide to find out.

You can read the transcript or watch the entire ep from the link. And if you're interested in what research has been done before on acupuncture, I wrote about it here.

Apparently it was the MOST complained-about ep of the popular Science show 'Catalyst' they ever got. And Willis had nothing to do with it, I assure you! In fact, the poor guy had to assure a lot of people at the convention, people kept coming up to grumble about the small sample they did, what the controls were, just how reputable the study was... and then, today, in BBC news:

There is no evidence acupuncture improves the success of IVF treatment, scientists say.

The complementary therapy has been used for centuries in China to aid female fertility and it is now available privately via some NHS clinics.

But the London-based researchers told a European fertility conference an analysis of 13 trials covering almost 2,500 women did not show any benefits.

...The experts from Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Trust carried out an extensive evaluation of the research carried out over the last 50 years.

Five of the trials analysed by the team looked at the effect of acupuncture at the time of egg retrieval, while the other eight examined the benefits of giving it at the time of embryo implantation.

There was some evidence patients undergoing egg retrieval did need less pain relief if they had acupuncture, they told the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology meeting in Barcelona.

However, neither group of studies showed any difference in pregnancy rates between those given true acupuncture, those given a sham version and those given nothing.

Yes, more research needed. But I hope Catalyst gets into the story too, in order to clear a few things up. Or at least stop people getting peeved at Dr Willis...

The folks at Planet Happy Kids came up with the most amazing fairy wing costume and we just had to share it. The premise is simple - cardboard, leaves, and glue. Switch out the leaves for feathers, glitter and sequins, tissue paper... the possibilities are endless. These fairy wings would be great for fall play date, slumber party, fairy birthday party, or even halloween, although I am we won't be able to wait that long. Thanks Planet Happy Kids , you just made this BIG kid happy!

Check out Planet Happy Kid's TV set costume, here

You can find tons of great ideas for fairy gifts, toys, and costumes here

Creepy advert - sexist for sure; also, implicitly racist

via Feminist Law Professors

For more info: Princess & The Peas

For More Info:  Princess & The Peas

For More Info:  Princess & The Peas

This is completely different from weddings and it was enthusiastically refreshing in that it made me think in different ways.  I got to do things and take time... and the girls had a great time.  Here are a few of those images:

Containing video files the vocabulary is about 700 words.

The next task is to make the sight sound enabled and to expand the English and mathematics signs.

For you travelers who are just itching to get to Bangkok, know that the average occupancy rate will be below the 80 percent projection; possibly averaging only 65 percent for the year and 70 percent in the second half of 2008.

Lower occupancy means lower room rates.

Hotel developers are being more selective and the recent dip in tourism will result in hardship for the small and medium-sized hotel owners. Some may be forced to sell or cut back on services and amenities to account for revenue declines.

If you want to really find out what goes on in Bangkok and to make it a trip that you’ll never forget, get a copy of my eBook; BANGKOK: Secrets of a Seductive City at:

http://www.925-wage-slave-alternatives.com  

There you’ll find articles about Thailand, business, marketing, sales, job interview techniques, retirement and leisure. 

Son muy esteticas y nada vulgares, espero las disfruten...

click para ver en tamanio real...

4th of july.

nagkita kita uli kami nila bes and les. havent seen them for awhile. lalo na si les. kasi di ba nga situation nun complicated haha. anyway toured namin si les sa chinatown. lol. well nakabili rin ako ng new bag. omg. they have like lots of new purses.. the ones which are in right now.. i wish i could buy all but you know i dont work yet. haha. by night, naginuman kami. it was really my first time drinking.. inom namin ung 99 bananas mix with mikes hard lemonade. haha. at the same time we were playing uno. masaya. every end of the game we all take a shot.. until we got drunk. lagi kami napunta sa banyo. ahahah. nagsuka si les sa banyo habang naihi si bestfriend. lmfao. tapos ako parang sira tinake sila ng picture ahahah. tapos nung ginagamit ni les banyo nagpicturan kami ni bestfriend lmao. when i needed to go the restroom i was swaying on my there. like i knew what i was doing but i couldnt control my movements and my eyes were hella heavy. when i saw on the toilet seat i was thinking "omg.. so this is what it feels like to be drunk.. hahaha" rofl. after the game and all si les ung unang bumagsak hahaha. tapos kami ni bestfriend tuloy pa rin inuman.. hala.. hanggang naubos.. patabingi na nga mga lakad talaga namin. tapos nung ayos na ung food.. daldalan pa rin kami ni bes. hanggang nagkadramahan at nagiyakan.. aun.. somehow tuloy tuloy tears ko nun..parehas kami ni bes. ah basta, sa amin na lang un. lol.

next day we had to pick up jamai sa hollywood. matagal na rin namin hindi sya nakita. nakakamiss rin ang bruha. haha. we went to target in eagle rock coz bes wanted a new swimming suit. that day kasi magswim kami sa santa monica beach. we all thought jamai was gonna swim, but no. she just wanted to get tanned 0_o.. tapos most of teh time nasa phone sya.. hello pano kami bonding uli nyan kung ganyan sya... anyway, we played vball sa beach, tapos sa sobrang init diretcho me sa beach. omfg. the waves were hella big. natatangay ako.. hello sa payat at liit ko ba naman. ahahah. tapos something hilarious happened to bestfriend. i cant tell coz its..rated r! roflmfao. it was fzkcng hilarious though. ahahahahahhaha.

that night naman.. we just chilled.n nagbbq kami.. and uno! lagi talo si les. ahahah. akala namin hindi na sya uuwi that night but she called her dad tapos aun pinapauwi sya. pick upin daw sya. wehh.. wellls masaya naman. at least tumagal sya.. we all had fun. we even played loud music. parang may party. lool. at least no one complained ahahah. aun.. hanggang nagsiuwian na lahat.. it was a great weekend. [:

The best thing though was being in a pub where I didn't know anyone so I didn't have to hang out with anyone-I was free to roam. The house has been feeling very claustrophobic lately, I'm not used to spending this much time with anyone so I was getting kinda narky. When you know 5 people in a city and they're the only people you hang out with its actually pretty hard to talk to strangers because, as a group, you're quite self-contained. Some people prefer it like that, I don't, it feels like a leash. Its a long way away from the days when I'd show up in the Pav by myself and wander from group to group, happy as fuckin'Larry because thats how you come out with stories and adventures and characters. By saying fuck it and rolling whatever direction you feel yourself being pulled. I love the people I live with, I just don't like being tied up because it makes me lazy and thats how I get bored and thats how I get frustrated.

Anyway, it turned a little sour when I realised that I may have been a little drunker than I remembered. I had forgotten the girls name in the five minutes it took to put in her number and wrote instead "you really really really want to call this girls". Ah Fucknut! Guess the dryspell will continue then.

There's a party on somewhere on Thursday, I might try and get her out without her realising that I don't know her fuckin'name. Dreads said Steads(he is the type to know everyone) would know, I don't think so though.

*Dreads is named so because of his dreads, Steads just rhymes with it and you never see one without the other

**On Sunday someone brought home a 4 litre bottle of wine worth 8e, I happenened to have a (cough) 500ml water bottle of the stuff with me, it even had a squirty top! Gangsta....

***thanks to my recent introduction to the greatest drink ever; THE GODFATHER. Scotch and hazelnut liquer, death in a glass, heavens ambulance and hells chaser-I love it. Its the cheapest way to drink in San Fran, effectively 2 for 1 because..well...its two drinks for the price of one

I even wrote Jazmine's mom to spread the good news and Jazmine also scribbled a note about her big day.  I can't wait to tell my brother! Yay for Jazmine!