"FBI issues warning over Barbie 'Video Girl' which could be used by paedophiles to make child pornography."

The doll has a camera built into it.

Pee-Wee Herman at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota.

"It's pretty surprising how popular Pee-wee is. I saw a great big burly biker with a Pee-wee doll."

Well, if he likes that doll so much, why doesn't he marry him?

"The concept of depicting a young, fashion-forward female with exaggerated features, including an oversized head and feet, is... unoriginal as well as an unprotectable idea."

Writes 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, giving the victory to Bratz over Barbie.

Mattel argues that the sculpt was entitled to broad protection because there are many ways one can depict an exaggerated human figure. It’s true that there’s a broad range of expression for bodies with exaggerated features: One could make a fashion doll with a large nose instead of a small one, or a potbelly instead of a narrow waist. But there’s not a big market for fashion dolls that look like Patty and Selma Bouvier. Little girls buy fashion dolls with idealized proportions —which means slightly larger heads, eyes and lips; slightly smaller noses and waists; and slightly longer limbs than those that appear routinely in nature. But these features can be exaggerated only so much: Make the head too large or the waist too small and the doll becomes freakish, not idealized.

(PDF of opinion here. Short news article here.)

Have Patty and Selma Bouvier ever been mentioned in a court case before?

Blogging's not easy.

I've got to fortify myself.



There now, you've getting an intimate look at the Meadhouse blogspace.

What are the best tools of fortification pictured here?
	Coffee, dumbbells, wireless keyboard and mouse.
	Pancakes, small robot figure, "Rules for Radicals."
	Giant monitor, many pairs of glasses, 2 kinds of fruit.
	Trees visible through big windows, noise cancellation headphones, Wacom Intuos.
	Time Capsule, extra camera and lenses, nail file and buffer.
	Moleskine notebook, iPhone, watch.
	Handmade wooden bowl, Berenice lamp, Sharpie.
pollcode.com free polls

"We are not very judgmental people, generally, and probably these kids are having a blast dancing their scary little hearts out."

Gawker primed me to disapprove of this video with young girls dancing to "Single Ladies," but I thought they were just fine and even kind of great.

Isn't there a song that is not about, you know, marriage, that they could dance to?

Pro-marriage is a bad message for young girls? When did that happen? When I was a kid, in the 1950s, we played "house," in which you pretended to be a married woman. With children, of course. Adults loved to give us baby dolls to play with. Imagine that. It was all perfectly okay. As for the costumes the girls are wearing in that video — again, in the 1950s "dress up" was a perfectly conventional and encouraged form of play. When did that become wrong?

If you don't think girls should dance like Beyonce in "Single Ladies," you shouldn't let them see the video at all. When I was a kid, I learned to dance listening to "The Mexican Hat Dance." I think I'd be a lot better off or at least a lot better dancer if I could have learned how to dance from "Single Ladies."

"Here's the famous banned butcher cover. You can sell it for $11m dollars."

So wrote John Lennon. And now, the item is offered for sale, at $11 million, naturally.

(If John Lennon really wrote "$11m dollars," he made a common redundancy error.)

The photograph — which, btw, is offal — may top the list of the most expensive Beatles memorabilia, which currently looks like this:

#5, John Lennon's talisman necklace...

#4, Gibson SG guitar played by George Harrison and John Lennon...

#3, A hand painted Beatles Sgt. Pepper's drum skin...

#2, John Lennon's Steinway piano...

#1, John Lennon's hand painted Rolls Royce Phantom V...

Heavy on the John Lennon. Light on the Paul McCartney.

Let's talk about that "breastfeeding doll."

Lisa Belkin writes about "Bebe Gloton," the doll that makes a sucky noise and mouth movement when placed next to plastic flower-shapes that are positioned at nipple level on a shirt to be worn by a little girl (or — I might add — boy):

Dr. Ronald Cohen, medical director for the Mother’s Milk Bank in San Jose as well as director of the intermediate intensive care nursery at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University, told ABC News, “My take is that anything which reminds young girls that their bodies are something other, and more, than sex objects, is a very good thing.” In the next sentence he added: “On the other hand, encouraging young girls to want to have babies at a very young age may not be so great.”

Don't all baby dolls do that?!

Here's video showing the doll — and The Today Show's Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford — in action:



I think it's pretty tame, actually. In any case, little girls (and boys!) who see their mothers breastfeeding younger siblings are likely to put their dolls up to their nipples and pretend to breastfeed. You don't need the additional technology to get that effect. My main objection to the doll is that it is annoying. I'd try not to buy kids toys that make irritating sounds. Leave more to the imagination.

And speaking of annoying sounds... Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford... yeesh!

"I have that exact doll in my house. As soon as I saw that picture, I knew it was a scam."

April's Mom was a hoaxer.

Every night for the last two months, thousands of abortion opponents across the nation logged on to a blog run by the suburban Chicago woman who identified herself only as "B" or "April's Mom."

People said they prayed that God would save her pregnancy. They e-mailed her photos of their children dressed in pink, bought campaign T-shirts, shared tales of personal heartache and redemption, and sent letters and gifts to an Oak Lawn P.O. box in support.

As more and more people were drawn to her compelling tale, eager advertisers were lining up. And established parenting Web sites that oppose abortion were promoting her blog -- which included biblical quotes, anti-abortion messages and a soundtrack of inspirational Christian pop songs.

By Sunday night, when "April's Mom" claimed to have given birth to her "miracle baby" -- blogging that April Rose had survived a home birth only to die hours later -- her Web site had nearly a million hits.

But the doll — the doll — was too much. She should have figured that some of those readers know their dolls.

Why can't we see the blogger — Beccah Beushausen — as a fiction writer?

She didn't set out to trick or cheat thousands of readers. She got people emotionally involved in a story that they believed was true, but she didn't solicit money from them — only sympathy and prayers — and she didn't cause them to panic in any sort of a "War of the Worlds" kind of a way. She didn't even rope in Oprah, in that "Million Little Pieces" way.

I say: leave Beccah alone.

AND: Lest you think I engage in such fictions, let me recommend one of my favorite songs:

The Dresden Dolls - Coin Operated Boy
Uploaded by Michel_Pougnou. - Independent web videos.

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade responds to coin-operated boy with beer-activated girl:

Lakeside, a young woman arranges her dolls.

Then photographs them.



Presumably, a design project. The light by Lake Mendota was excellent for photography. These photos of mine were done with my iPhone.