My blog feeder has been overwhelming of late (I walk away for three hours of class and return to find it brimming with 100s of stories!) so this doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a highly subjective collection of stuff I’ve read, remembered to flag for later, and feel moved to pass on.

Hanna’s started blogging again at …fly over me, evil angel… and may soon be blogging for a UK-based project on eBooks (stay tuned for more).

Phyllis Schlafly recently claimed that gay people are responsible for 5% of what’s wrong with America, and feminists responsible for 95%. I asked Hanna if this makes means I can claim to be 100% evil? She says yes.

In the UK, a university administrator has (justifiably!) caused a kerfluffle by suggesting that male university lecturers should enjoy lusting after female students (yes, just the women) as one of the ‘perks’ of their job.

It might just be because I’m in the middle of a project on collective memory and the 19th Amendment, but I find the recurring theme of far right pundits suggesting women shouldn’t have the right to vote bizarre and slightly alarming.

Conservative Christians in America apparently think Jesus wouldn’t want socialized medicine. Except when it’s socialized medicine for them. As my friend Rachel commented, “Nothing makes me more crazy than Christians against HEALTH CARE FOR THE POOR. OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE DID THEY EVER READ THE BIBLE.”

And in other disheartening religious news: the Vatican thinks “but other people do it too” is an excuse for sexual abuse (and once again equates abusive sexual behavior with sexual orientation). Way to be totally immature, guys.

While we’re on the subject of immaturity, reading Playboy will make boys gay (bad? good?). Or, the threat of becoming gay will make boys stop reading Playboy (good? bad?). Or something. Greta Christina explains.

After all of that, please enjoy . . .

Cute kittens: nolan, raven, and minerva.

Cute Boston: here, here, and here.

One of the best anti-censorship letters from a librarian I’ve ever read (via Hanna via Stephen Fry on twitter)

Oh, and the Scotsman definitely has this month’s great headline: Ben Nevis marred by blight of bananas.

Enjoy your weekend, folks! . . . I tried to take a picture of the possessed scooter that lives in the playground near my apartment this morning, but my camera was out of batteries. I promise to be better-prepared next time. More soon!

Welcome back to the Future Feminist Librarian-Activist, year three (dear gods and goddesses of all shapes and sizes, I can’t believe it’s true, but it is). More posts to come over the Labor Day weekend, catching y’all up on the state of my Future Feminist life, but meanwhile I’m taking the poor woman’s route out of blogging silence and offering a links list of August internet reads. Because, predictably, while I took a break from blogging during the month of August, I didn’t take a break from blog-reading. Lots of interesting stuff came across GoogleReader in the past four weeks, and I offer here a selection of those that I particularly enjoyed.

p.s. pirro composed a haiku poem about taking time off from blogging.

Simon Callow wrote a witty and surprisingly moving piece in the Guardian about the awkwardness of on-screen sex.

One of my favorite authors has a new biography out, and I’m itching to read it!

Guest-blogging at feministing, Jos wrote a piece about the folly of trying to make spaces ‘safe’.

indexed provides a succinct diagram of the relationship between cultural standards of ‘beauty’ and the real world.

Which brings me to the next link: we are all ‘plus-sized’ now. As Hanna pointed out, this proves we aren’t crazy when nothing in the clothing store seems made to fit real women’s real bodies.

News flash from the UK: teenagers love sex. whodathunkit?

This has been out there for a while, but Bonk author Mary Roach gave a great talk at TED: ideas worth spreading called 10 things you didn’t know about orgasm.

Thank you, Senator Barney Frank.

Via Adventures of a Young Feminist, I really like this post about the way the word ‘privilege’ has evolved into a cavalier way to shut down discussion about issues important to us all.

Via Amanda Marcotte’s podcast at RhRealityCheck, I give you Deflowered Memoirs, an ongoing project collecting personal narratives of sexual awakening.

One of my alma maters, the University of Aberdeen, has just received £600,000 in donations toward the funding of a new university library. As a librarian-in-training, may I say there are few ways in which money can be better spent than on libraries.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has a piece up at the Guardian about her experience dealing with misogyny in personal relationships.

via Amanda Marcotte (whose analysis of the original post is worth the read) comes a piece by Will Wilkinson on one common conservative gripe with the left: “liberal equality is just too confusing!”

And finally, second image, third definition down: an 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue finds it necessary to use no less than three foreign languages, two asterisks, and self-referentially vague phrases to define a certain word for female genitalia. The reader is left wondering whether the compiler of the dictionary knew what, in fact, the word meant! (thanks to Hanna for the link)

image above by dakokichidekalb @ Flickr.

I haven’t had the oomph for actual narrative posts lately, so here’s a links list of some of the online reading that’s been keeping me educated and entertained the last couple of weeks. Hope you’re all having a lovely July.

The living statue street theatre performance one & other is underway on Trafalgar Square’s empty fourth plinth in London. I’m already mildly addicted and it’s only week two! Watch here for regular updates from now until 14 October.

Elsewhere in England, the human shrub is planting unauthorized flowers in public spaces.

Writing for the Telegraph online, Josa Young argues for more, and better, sex in fiction:

I read quite a few “hen lit” and “chick lit” novels to see what they were like. I was quite astonished to see how old-fashioned some were, with women taking quite traditional roles and doing polite and rather unrealistic jobs. There were sex scenes all right, but they seemed dropped in from a great height, and quite pornographic while lacking authenticity and passion.

If writers take Young’s challenge seriously, they might provide useful material for all the youths the National Health Service is encouraging to orgasm regularly for better health.

Columnist Christopher Byrne on the philosophy of “free-range kids” and what sort of adults their parents hope they are growing into.

Last week, Dahlia Lithwick had some predictions for Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings:

For those brave souls choosing to watch this spectacle on live television all week, it’s useful to point out that most of her interlocutors will not be addressing themselves to Judge Sotomayor at all, although they will frequently use her name. Instead, they will be talking aloud to their constituents back home, with Judge Sotomayor serving as a sort of constitutional blackboard on which to sketch out their legal views: Senators will talk at length about their pet projects and concerns, then turn to ask Judge Sotomayor what she thinks of their pet projects and concerns. She will say she is for them.

As a teenager in West Michigan during the 1990s, I was a little too close to the original Promise Keepers Christian men’s movement for comfort (thanks guys for helping precipitate my commitment to feminist politics!) Bill Berkowitz @ AlterNet reports on the movement’s recent makeover and possible resurgence. Whoopie.

In other sad Michigan news, Governor Jennifer Granholm has signed an order closing the Michigan Department of History, Arts & Libraries as part of an effort to balance the state budget.

On the upside, I’m glad to be reporting some positive lgbt rights news from my home state: Kalamazoo, Michigan’s city commission voted June 29th to expand legal protections for their nonstraight and transgendered citizens.

Threadless, the online t-shirt design group, offers a gallery of edible art: cakes inspired by threadless tees.

gwen @ Sociological Images explains what’s wrong with a chart supposedly showing a correlation between certain books and peoples’ intelligence.

Another false causation scenario is being floated by a Polish mother who claims her daughter got pregnant from stray sperm while swimming in a public pool.

Perhaps this mother could have benefited from some of these strange sex ed tools from around the world.

And on a personal note, by brother Brian and his girlfriend Renee, both artists in the Portland, Oregon, area, had their portraits drawn by an awesome emerging artist named Elva last weekend at the Portland art fair.

via my sister Maggie on twitter, fifteen creepy vintage ads, featuring such gems as a ‘pears soap disaster’ and one with the mystifying tagline, ‘is it always illegal to kill a woman?’

*Photograph taken near Government Center, Boston, Mass. by me. Altered using the amusing “supernova” filter in Gimp, the open source photo-editing software.

So clearly, I need to get my Google Reader habit under control before these link lists become ubiquitous (although they also offer me an excuse to use the word “ubiquitous” which, ever since reading the theologian William Stringfellow in undergrad has been a word of particular charm in my mind). But since it’s raining here in Boston this morning and I’m enjoying my coffee and strawberry cream cheese croissant, purchased rather damply from the clear flour bread bakery around the corner, I’m going to compile at least one more list for y’all before wandering off to read more about the history of the history of education.

We’ll start off with a column from the always-dependable Jon Carroll on Obama’s weak support of folks with nonstraight sexual orientations.

Followed closely (in case you need a fluffy antidote) with the Guardian on an art project to create books that don’t exist.

Mark Edmundson over @ The American Scholar on the dynamics of “conversation” with someone who never stops to take a breath.

Once again, “feminism” is being smeared as obsolete. The gals @ Pursuit of Harpyness weigh in, as does Mandy @ Bitch blogs.

Rachel @ The Feminist Agenda blogs about using vocabulary of human sexual orientation for other species, and how this (perhaps incorrectly) shapes our understanding of non-human sexuality.

Earlier this week, I linked to Dina Goldstein’s “fallen princess” photography series; Latoya Peterson @ Racialicious questions the portrayal of Jasmine (from Aladdin) in contrast to the other princesses in the series.

Arvan, over @ sexgenderbody, posts about a forthcoming Canadian documentary about the possibility of female-only reproduction.

Women In Technology, a UK-based blog, offers some thoughts on how playground-type bullying is prevalent in offices, between adults, not just among children.

Janice Formichella @ Feminist Review offers us a taste of the new book Making Marriage Modern: Women’s Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II, which is definitely on my reading list.

Kelefa Sanneh @ The New Yorker meditates on “fast bikes, slow food, and the workplace wars,” or one of the perennial questions of modernity: what makes work meaningful.

A lot of feminist blogs have posted in response to the BC Cancer Agency’s recent ad campaign promoting regular pap smears, but I especially enjoyed Cara’s post over @ Feministe: “The reason to prevent cervical cancer shouldn’t be seen as any different from the reason to prevent any other cancer. Which is . . . because we value human lives and think they’re worth living just because.”

zp27 @ Feministing Community asks “why won’t he stop writing about this?” in response to the latest installment in William Saletan’s “pro-choice” op-eds over at Slate.com that technically support abortion rights while disrespecting women who choose or must have abortions.

lisa over @ Sociological Images offers examples of a public service announcement campaign that equates penises with firearms. Note to psa authors: not okay to characterize the genitals of any human being as a dangerous weapon. (Graphic images, possibly not safe for work).

And finally, on a more positive note, Greta Christina @ Blowfish Blog on how sexual tastes could be seen as similar to musical tastes.

*Image of recent flooding in my home town by Dennis R.J. Geppert, from the Holland Sentinel website.

Just moved my RSS feeds from iGoogle to Google Reader this Sunday. So…yeah. Suddenly, it’s a lot easier to skim content as well as headlines on the various blogs I read and find the stuff that catches my interest. Here’s what I’ve tagged so far this week — just thought I’d be friendly and share the overwhelm with ya’ll!

Dina Goldstein’s fallen princess photography series has been posted in various places around the feminist blogosphere.

Lara Williams at the F-word writes about how, regardless of body shape or size, it’s women’s bodies and how they’re enjoyed by others that counts in most media outlets.

PBS held a ‘debate‘ between Christina Page, a pro-choice activist, and Troy Newman of Operation Rescue, which can be explored interactively on the PBS website.

Torie Atkinson at Tor.com writes about sexism in a contest tied in (ironically) with the new science fiction film District 9 which is, at least from what can be discerned from the previews, about the ghettoization of aliens who come to earth.

For more on anti-women sexism in media coverage of the sci-fi world, see here and here.

Oh, and did I forget to mention Hanna also blogged about it?

Joan Walsh, of Slate.com, writes about her experience on the O’Reilly Factor where she tried to confront Bill O’Reilly about the violent rhetoric he used (and later denied using) against Dr. Tiller.

I can’t actually watch O’Reilly for health and sanity reasons, but if you want the clip you can find it here at Media Matters.

Apparently, my home state is going to be grappling once again with same-sex marriage, which was explicitly outlawed there in 2004. Good luck, y’all. I’m a little bit sorry I can’t be registered to vote in two states at once.

Thank you Nina Totenberg for dissecting the rhetoric surrounding Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial affect and pointing out how gender, does in fact, shape expectations of “proper” behavior.

Paul Waldman over at The American Prospect asks what the rise in zombie fiction and film has to say about current psychology and politics.

Feminist Review offers a look a blue cotton gown, a new memoir by nurse-practitioner and one-time midwife, Patricia Harman.

sassymonkey over at blogher reports on the latest adult discovery about the freakish and out-of-control lives of the modern teenager (cue hand-wringing), the genre of YA lit now being labeled trauma porn. Since Katie Roiphe’s weighed in, I might just get irritated enough to blog about it at greater length. I might have to blog about that one at some point. As a feminist, future librarian, not to mention fan of young adult lit and all. ‘Cause there are just so many things wrong with this wailing and gnashing of teeth. But for now, check out sassymonkey’s post, which I think asks entirely legitimately: “I wonder if people live in the same world I do. Teens and trauma porn is so. not. new.”

And her conclusion, which really says it all:

Teens live in the real world and some of them are going through hell and some others think they are going through hell. Sometimes they need to see their world reflected back at them in books. Sometimes they need to see problems that are bigger than their own. And yes, sometimes they need the pink and turquoise backdrops of escapism that authors like Cabot, who have been there themselves, provide. No one part of young adult literature is all good or all bad. Teens are real. Their books should be too.

Until the link backlog threatens to burst again . . .