I am totally calling AppleCare. HOW did the BG supercomputer miss this yesterday? No, not this, THIS! On the one hand, it’s no surprise, given this. On the other … aw, I’m just sad. They honestly seemed like a good match! (Not even gonna go into this.)

And, frankly, yes: I’m feeling a little bereft about the fact that neither has called BG for super-support. Guess maybe they’re aware of le petit conflict of interest?

So okay, I’m just going to pop some popcorn, make some Sleepytime, and work my way back through The Red Shoe Diaries to see if I can pinpoint exactly what went wrong.

I know that ever since we here at BG HQ introduced the world to the saucily lower-cased slydial, a service that allows you to call directly into someone’s voice mail — ring-free — the world has, in turn, been waiting impatiently for the slydial video contest to arrive directly into our YouTube.

And as of yesterday — finally — there it was. The “How sly Are You?” sweepstakes gives you 90 seconds to show us just how slyly  you slydial. (The company has provided some sample videos for sly-spiration.)

Just one question: how sly is it, exactly, to make a video of yourself lying to your boss/boyfriend/mother/car insurance agent and post it on YouTube?

“Uh, yes, hello, Breakup Girl? Gee, I guess your phone is off or something because this went straight to voice mail. Yeah, well, anyway, this is Maria and you know that post I said I’d write today on the slydial YouTube contest? I just am not going to be able to get to it. I’m sorry. Maybe you could get on of the other super-bloggers to do it? I think Mia said she had some time on her hands…”

Researchers at Florida State University embarked on a skin-deep academic journey to uncover men’s preferences for women’s hair length. They learned that men favor loooooong hair. Add thick and brown to the tresses equation and they’ll be swooning. Yes, you heard me correctly – brown. The men studied reported a preference for brunettes over blondes. So why the fascination with her, huh? And where, BG might wonder, does this leave redheads? (Here’s the advice from the report our tipster spotted at AOL Shopping — ! — which itself should tip us off that this inforrmation is more advertorial than scientific: “Don’t have long tresses? Fake it! Shop for a long, brown wig.” Sorry, Det. Scottie Ferguson, it actually does matter to me!)

But while we’re here, just for fun, how heavily does hair length/color weigh in your attraction to a potential mate? What happens on a bad hair day?

Even if we can’t easily verify all the details of the original story, we can be reasonably sure these babes are cooler than Ant-Nellie. (And anything starring Kevin Costner.) From Kate Harding at Broadsheet:

Someone needs to make a movie about Jacquie Davis and Helen Cliffe, like, yesterday. The story of two old friends who happen to be female bodyguards is intriguing enough right there, but better still, they’re wisecracking female bodyguards! Take single mother Cliffe on her work-life balance: “It’s far more stressful than being shot at, sorting out the childcare.” Or former police officer Davis on working for the Saudi royal family: “It’s the same thing every year: you have to be vetted by a guy from the Saudi embassy saying, ‘Oh, my God, you are a woman!’ At which point you have to throw one of his blokes on the floor and stamp on his windpipe to prove you can do the job.”

(more…)

Connecticut ruling overturns ban on gay marriage.

In this ad, Mom’s not worried ’cause her kid aspires to marry a “princess” and not “the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics.” She’s worried ’cause her kid is a girl. That, according to supporters of California’s Prop. 8 is what will happen if the anti-gay-marriage measure fails. Homos getting married! Your children going gay! Cats and dogs living together! Total chaos! (Nothing about what kids learn from growing up in a state where discrimination is written into the law.)

Palate-cleanser:  NoOnProp8.com.

Daily Mail, via Boing Boing:

“A married couple who decided to go their separate ways agreed to divide their home and its contents literally — by sawing the house in half.

One day the house was standing on stilts in a Cambodian village. The next, only half was there.

The wife will keep the half that is standing, while the husband has carried off bits and pieces of the home to put them up in a nearby field.”

YIKES. Seems Pitt’s pet cause — a deeply important one — is in trouble, according to SFGate.com (scroll down to second item):

A poll sponsored by CBS 5-TV indicates that California voters now favor passage of Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment to ban same sex “I do’s,” by 47 to 42 percent.

The poll of 670 registered voters taken by Survey USA is a big shift from one taken just last month by the Public Policy Institute of California. That one showed Prop. 8 losing, 55 to 41 percent.

Advocates of same-sex marriage over at the No on 8 campaign say their tracking polls show the same trend, with the ban now leading, 47 to 43 percent. The Yes on 8 campaign happily reports that it’s seeing a shift as well.

One explanation? Well, the latest poll was taken a few days after Prop. 8 proponents put commercials on the air featuring Newsom celebrating the state Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage by half-yelling, half-growling to a City Hall crowd, “This door’s wide open now! It’s gonna happen – whether you like it or not!”

The same ads show a law professor warning that if the measure passes, it could jeopardize the tax-exempt status of churches and lead to “gay marriage taught in public schools.”

Same-sex marriage proponents dispute both arguments — but the ad does seem to be working.

Learn more — and take action — here. There’s even a wedding registry!

WWD reports that fashion powerhouse Diane Von Furstenburg has teamed up with DC to pen her own comic featuring the “empowering” adventures of Diva, Viva, and Fifa. (DVF! See?)

Publication coincides with the launch of DVF’s new Wonder-Woman inspired (?!) collection.

WWD: “The heroines — all wearing DVF clothes — make things happen.” As superpowers go, that’s pretty broad. Still, I’m down with the message, assuming at least one of them is packing the Wrap Dress of Truth.

Kind of puts certain things in perspective, actually.

“I don’t know if you know about ‘The Valley,’ but a teenager getting knocked up is certainly not news for us,” said [Wasilla resident Caleb, 29]. “So I am not at all surprised. As for Levi Johnston, what is the big debate? Last I heard he was going to marry Bristol. Why wouldn’t he?”

The comedian Bill Maher has called Levi “America’s number-one political prisoner.” He’s begged the youth to remember he still has options. “This is the 21st century, at least in the blue states,” Mr. Maher said on TV the other night. “You don’t have to do this. You have options,” he said. “Just grab your skull bong, climb out the window and get on the highway.”

“What I’ve heard from family members is that it was a high-school sweetheart kind of a deal,” said [Josh Sieler, 26, born and raised in Wasilla] of Levi and Bristol. “In Alaska people tend to get together with somebody—and let me think of a way to say this—it doesn’t seem as frivolous as it does down in the states. There’s not as much of a guy-girl ratio; there’s not a whole lot of fish in the sea in Alaska. You know, I married my high-school sweetheart and we’ve been together 10 years.

“If anything, I think it’s going to make things easier,” he continued. “You know, having snow for nine months a year, winter nine months a year, I absolutely would go insane if I didn’t have a wife next to me, or a significant other. It’s nice to have a companion in Alaska. I wouldn’t say that he has to all of a sudden give up any aspirations or goals that he has in his life. As far as ‘getting out,’ you know, it’s hard to get out of Alaska. You figure we pay $500 to go to Seattle round trip.”

From this week’s New York Observer.