Photoshopping saves time, money, and hours of bingeing and purging.

Blender’s gone the route of Radar, and photoshopped a Britney Spears satirical cover.

We’re pro-recycling in any capacity, from recycling the magazine itself to recycling a shot from amateur softcore porn and sticking a celeb’s head on it. Plus, we hear body-doubling reduces your risk of makeup poisoning.

Our friends made fun of us for using a body double in our facebook profile. Why the double standard?

Greenhorne

The Director’s Guild of America is likely to sign a contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers of America soon. The Directors’s decision, while a presumably smaller group than the writers, may influence the Writers’ Guild to cut a deal shortly. Details about the new contract are sketch, but Director’s Guild spokesmen say that they did successfully get the studios to recognize their rights to revenue from Internet sales.

Of course, management is saying it is a good deal, too, so who knows? Maybe the directors caved in and sold out? All we know is this: forests (and lumber) are disappearing. There must be a forest’s worth of wood out there just to make the lumber that they are stapling their placards, too. We love a good strike as much as the next entertainment web-site, but, even if they used certified lumber, there has to be a better use for that wood than propping up signs. –BradyDale

Queen Elizabeth made it to the finals of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.

The VMAs were a huge bust. The boozy decadence of the Golden Globes was reduced to an hour-long Access Hollywood. Now, the Oscars might not happen? Please end the strike. Hell hath no fury like a Beanstockd deprived of glitz and glamour.

And begin. The Oscar nominations were announced and “No Country For Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood” stood out with eight each. “No Country” scared us more than “Jeepers Creepers” and “There Will Be Blood” is about oil, so we’re pulling for Cate Blanchett. With two more Oscar nods—one as Queen Elizabeth and one as a houndstooth-clad Bob Dylan—Cate continues to prove that she is one of the best actors on the planet.

And it’s a planet worth saving. Cate agrees. She’s the spokesperson for the Australian Conservation Foundation’s “Who On Earth Cares” initiative. It helps people generate letters to politicians expressing concern over global warming. So far, over 18,000 Aussies have taken part.

Now, if the Academy needs help generating witty banter…

Bacon Bits

I’ve been reading a lot lately about humanure (a term which, I believe, is self-explanatory), but I gotta say, this concept is a little less… icky. Fiberwood, based out of Sacramento, CA (yay California!!!!), is a company that’s making mulch out of cardboard. In brief: tons of manufactured goods are constantly coming into the state, mostly in cardboard boxes. The cardboard winds up in landfills if not recycled. So Fiberwood is putting it to use–up to 100 tons a day!–for hydroseeding (mixing water and mulch at a ratio of 100 gallons for every 75 lbs. and then adding seeds to the mix; one application of this would be to restore ground cover in areas devastated by forest fires), and hydromulch (the mix minus the seeds; used to cover landfills in order to cut down on the smell emanating from them; 1/4″ thick layer of this mixture does the trick as well as a 6″ thick layer of soil). Thank God for people who are thinking outside of the (cardboard) box.

Not so much a $20 million Malibu mansion as a lovely hillside home in the Shire.  But the concept’s the same… roughly. Ok, I’ll admit I’m stretching the association a bit. This house in Wales is slightly less, shall we say, ostentatious than a multi-million-dollar mansion.  For about $6000, if my pound-to-dollar conversion skills are at all accurate–not even a 30,000th of Miss Roberts’ cost–this “low impact home” built into the side of a hill uses straw bales throughout for insulation purposes, as well as a woodburner for extra heat. Underground air is used to cool the fridge. Solar panels provide the light, and there’s even a compost toilet, and so much more. And you get to feel like you live in a fantasy novel, at no extra cost.

I’m not good at future planning. I don’t plan at all. I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow. I don’t have a day planner and I don’t have a diary. I completely live in the now, not in the past, not in the future.

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Heathcliff Andrew Ledger, 1979-2008

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[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ml1j59smdcM]

We’ve already got our names down for this baby…it is officially the world’s thinnest computer.

The MacBook Air is Apple’s latest in its line of strong selling MacBooks. Once not too long ago, we pretentiously considered most Apple computers toys made for the technologically handicapped. We are now proven wrong, MacBooks are actually made for the technologically handicapped and the incredibly trendy and superficial; we, of course, fall into the latter category.

Why does the MacBook Air really make us nut? It’s all green. That’s right, the comp uses LED backlights and minimizes the use of polluting chemicals in production. Gotta have it.

Drizzler

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We’re just happy they’re using mass transit.

When people talk about things and then do something about it, they can make a difference.

Thanks for the day off life lesson, Dr. King!

Bacon Bits

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I don’t know why it never occurred to me when I was perusing the shiny Vicky’s Secret catalogs that get delivered to our apartment on a weekly basis. Probably because I was too busy wiping up my liquid envy from Gisele’s legs (All of me reaches up to her knees). But hot damn! A lot of paper goes into these catalogs. And if my household alone can fill up our entire recycling bin just with the ones we get every month, then how many forests are getting chopped down for the 395 million catalogs that get sent out every year? Initially, none of the paper used for their catalogs was recycled and Canada’s sadly unprotected Boreal Forest was providing this paper. Once protests were staged, VS did start to come around. Good thing. In the age of Internet, there is absolutely no need for ecosystems to be destroyed in order for us to flip through glossy pages.

(which, by the way, is a fabulous song by Ane Brun)… do not cremate me. Cremation, in a nutshell, requires the same amount of energy for a 75-minute burning stint as one person tends to use in their home in a month, a staggering amount of both gas and electricity. In addition, mercury emissions and dioxins are released, further polluting the atmosphere. For my crossing-over, a cardboard box will do just fine, preferably with a tree planted atop my remains (yes, I’m doing my coffin-shopping now, while y’all are rocking your skinny jeans!). Cardboard or solid wood, such as bamboo or pine, which can decompose and then allow my body to decompose into the earth, is a better bet than the expensive coffins most commonly used in burials. These tend to be nothing more than a thin layer of wood on top of chipboard, which contains formaldehyde–good for preservation of dead people, bad for preservation of the earth.