... when you've got Eve! Here's my new favorite monologue, from Ensler's new book I Am an Emotional Creature (Random House, 2010). Best to listen to her read it on NPR

YOU TELL ME HOW TO BE A GIRL IN 2010

Questions, doubt, ambiguity, and dissent/have somehow become very unmasculine./ Authoritarian maniacs are/premiers, czars, and presidents./Each one is more righteous than the next./ Each town they bomb/ each human they kill/ is done for “humanitarian” purposes./ People don’t own the water in their own village/ and they certainly don’t own the diamonds and gold./ Millions are forced to make dinner out of garbage and dust/ while Russian businessmen and movie stars/ are buying 500-million-euro villas on Côte Sud./ Bees have stopped making honey./ People are drilling in all the wrong places./ The U.S., Russia, Canada, Denmark, and Norway all claim the Arctic/ but none of them seem to care that the polar bears are drowning./ They are fingerprinting, photographing our licenses and teeth./ Big Brother is now in our phones, our pods, our PCs./ Not one of us feels even a little safer./ New Age mental health providers turn/ out to be former war torturers with beards./ And the pope in a dress showing off his/ ermine trim and cuffs/ is telling everyone that/ people kissing people they love is the greatest evil./ A woman running for U.S. vice president/ believes in creationism/ but not global warming./ Why is everyone so much more afraid of sex/ than SCUD missiles?/ And who decided God wasn’t into pleasure?/ And if the hetero nuclear family is so great/ how come everyone is fleeing it/ or paying their life savings just/ to sit in a room with a stranger and cry about it?/ The Iraq war cost nearly $3 trillion./ I can’t even count that high/ but I know/ that money could have/ would have/ ended poverty in general/ which would have canceled terrorism./ How come we have money to kill/ but no money to feed or heal?/ How come we have money to destroy/ but no money for art and schools?/ The fundamentalists now have / billion-dollar private armies./ The Taliban is back/ but never went away./ Women are burned, raped, bludgeoned, sold,/ starved, and buried alive/ and still don’t know they are the majority./ Water is clearly nearly running out/ but even in the desert where there’s serious drought/ the golf courses are green and lush/ and the swimming pools are full of water/ for the twelve rich people who might decide to come./ Special people adopt hand-picked babies in faraway lands./ Their flights there cost more/ than the babies’ parents made/ this year./ Why don’t they just give it to them?/ Slavery is back/ but never went away./ Just ask anyone who’s been whipped/ how deep the legacy./ Six million dead in the Congo/ and they never made the news,/ and don’t tell me it doesn’t have/ to do with color/ and minerals. / Poor folks are dying first/ From hurricanes/ Shame/ Tsunamis/ Radiation/ Pollution/ Floods/ And neglect./ Rich folks/ just put up fancier super-electrified gates/ on their private perfect cities./ Everyone’s having “benefits”/ and throwing fancy parties/ with lots of swag/ so the rich people feel good about giving/away the tiny little bit of the whole lot they have./ But no one really wants to change anything./ If you really want it/ you have to give something up/ like everything/ and then those that have, wouldn’t,/ and then who would they be?/ And that’s too complicated/ so they write checks/ and keep doing the same old things./ Selling change./ Making revolution profitable./ Corporations own everything anyway/ even our hippie jeans, memory cells, and rain./ Why do so many women leaders look like Margaret Thatcher/ and act even meaner?/ Why doesn’t anyone remember anything?/ And how come rich bad people/ get paid lots of money to give speeches/ and poor bad people are tortured/ and in prisons?/ Is there anyone in charge?/ Or is this whole thing spinning out until it explodes/ or dissolves?/ And if there is something we can do/ why aren’t we doing it?/ What happened to fury?/ What happened to accuracy/ or accountability?/ What happened to not showing off your wealth?/ What happened to kindness?/ What happened to teenagers rebelling/ instead of buying and selling?/ What happened to teenagers kissing/ instead of blogging and dissing?/ What happened to teenagers marching/ and refusing/ instead of exploiting and using?/ I want to touch you in real time/ not find you on YouTube,/ I want to walk next to you in the mountains/ not friend you on Facebook./ Give me one thing I can believe in/ that isn’t a brand name./ I’m lonely./ I’m scared./ Girls younger than me are giving blowjobs/ in homeroom/ and they don’t even know it’s sex./ They just want to be popular/ and get some respect./ Most girls my age are taking pills
or not getting out of bed/ or eating or starving/ or getting nose jobs or implants/ or getting cut
or twittering away/ or covering themselves/ or desperate for a way/ to be awake without faking/ to be alive without freaking/ to be serious/ to be true/ to even think of loving someone
when we’re already doomed./ You tell me how to be a girl in 2010/ I say let’s go for it/ if it’s all coming down./ I say let’s speak it/ let’s fight it/ let’s right it/ there’s nothing to hold on to/ if it’s already gone./ They left it to us./ It sucks but it’s true./ It’s you and me baby.

The moon Pandora, in a distant solar system, approximately four and a half light years away, is so hauntingly beautiful to some of the viewers of James Cameron's Avatar, which takes place on the distant world, many are experiencing the post-Avatar "blues."

According to the article, many fans, obsessed with the visual beauty of the film, as well as the underlying tone of human (and American)(and corporate) evil, are reporting depression and thoughts of suicide on message boards all over the world.

Even the Twitter tag #Avatar has people buzzing (35 new tweets just as I wrote this) about the revelation that people actually felt bad about their lives after seeing the movie.

And the storyline was one we've seen before.

So why the deep emotional response? Isn't it just a movie, after all?

Well, yes. But there is one thing to be said in favor of these feelings after seeing the film: the distressed movie watchers are sad because "they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora."And "compared with life on Earth, Pandora is a beautiful, glowing utopia."

No argument there.

I never quite realized just how ugly downtown Boston is.

Finally, a voice of reason emanating from Jerusalem! Former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak announced that he thought Israel should stop it's avoidance of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, even if it means IDF generals and officers face charges of war crimes and/or crimes against humanity for last year's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

"Israel is part of the international community, and it must conduct itself in accordance with the interpretation that is common in international law."

Although Israel was one of the original group of nations that created the ICC, it has never ratified the treaty that it helped write, fearing political ramifications. But the time for self-serving nonsense is over.

Israel continuously asserts that the IDF is the most moral army in the world (which causes fits of incredulous giggles in most circles), and if they want to stand behind that, they need to join the rest of civilized countries and submit themselves to possible legal charges. The writer of the Haaretz editorial said it best: "A country that believes in the morality of its actions and those of its soldiers should not behave like a permanent suspect and boycott institutions of international law."

Hopefully this breath of fresh logic will be followed by a freeze on building settlements in the West Bank and ugly apartments in East Jerusalem. And then maybe the thing we've been keeping our fingers crossed for will happen: two states.

Here's to stupid optimism.

The Swiss have passed a ban on building minarets on mosques with 58 percent of the vote and only four canton out of 26. Laughably, immediately afterwards, the government issued a statement that said, that a ban on minarets was not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture."

No one knows (or if they do, they aren't telling) how two uninvited guests got into a White House state dinner, hung out with the likes of Joe Biden and Rahm Emanuel, and didn't get shot in the process of trying to do so.

In a space that is no stranger to controversy, having previously housed a speak-easy and an erotic dance club, the first-ever American cannabis cafe opened last week, according to Reuters.