Celebrity execs and personal handlers at this year's Grammys have been ordered to keep Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood far away from each other during Sunday's awards ceremony so they don't scratch each others' eyes out or something. Not only are the two both tributaries from District Blonde-Country-Crossover who must eventually battle to the death, but a Team Swift source claims that "Taylor feels Carrie is always rude to her, so she steers clear of her." At last year's CMAs Underwood and her co-host Brad Paisely negged Swift about her relationship with Conor Kennedy; Underwood also once told Allure Mag rather tersely: "I'm not close to her."

The rumor is being disputed with the citation of this photo of Swift and Underwood hugging, as if that's some kind of proof that they're biffles. But think of all the times you've hugged some asshole you hated just because people were watching. And you're probably not even famous! [HuffPo, Us Weekly]

• Although this is the last-ever thing I'd want to think of iconic Sweet Charity star and overall awesome Shirley MacLaine, her daughter Sachi Parker, now 56, claims in a forthcoming tell-all called Lucky Me that the Downton Abbey actress "pressured" the 17-year-old Parker to lose her virginity to a 1970s boyfriend while a pair of sex therapists was staying at their Malibu home."

  We're all here to help you, sweetheart," MacLaine allegedly said, according to the excerpts.
  [Parker] felt like Mia Farrow surrounded by Satanists in Rosemary's Baby.
  After having unprotected sex while MacLaine waited in a nearby room, the couple purportedly emerged to a waiting audience.
  "Did you achieve climax?" the sex therapists asked, according to Parker.
  "We both nodded vigorously. They smiled smugly. I hated them."

  MacLaine says that her daughter's book is "virtually all fiction." :-| [NYDN]

• Mariska Hargitay (<333) on her mom, famous pinup girl Jayne Mansfield, who died in a car accident when Hargitay was six: "There's this picture of her in a director's chair with her measurements on the back: 40-21-35. When I look at that picture part of me says, 'Mom, I love your sense of humor.' But the other part of me says, 'No, your name is supposed to go there. Your body is not who you are." [People]
• Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill gave each other YA BRO mega high-fives as they swam with an unidentified topless woman. [Daily Mail]
• BTW, DiCaprio may be dating homely Weekawken librarian Rachel Gleeberschmitz Albanian model Aferdita Dreshaj. [Page Six]
• Chanel Iman and A$AP Rocky are dating, I love it. [Page Six]
• A former Lil Wayne fan is suing after one of Weezy's posse allegedly slammed a skateboard over his head. [TMZ]
• The first photo of Minka Kelly as Jackie O. in The Butler. [People]
• The Kate Upton Sports Illustrated cover was leaked. You look cold, Kate Upton! Take my sweater. [TMZ]
• Bradley Cooper's mom warned him against a reunion with Zoe Saldana. [MTV UK]
• Kiefer Sutherland wore a bra with dynamite strapped on it as he was awarded Harvard's Hasty Pudding Man of the Year title. [E!]
• Here's a trippy shot of Nikita star Maggie Q's poster for PETA. [HuffPo]
• Cee Lo Green is being sued for two Christmas concerts he bailed on. [TMZ]
• Northeastern storm Nemo kept Katie Holmes from attending the show for her own fashion line, Holmes & Yang. [People]
• LeAnn Rimes walked a pre-Grammy red carpet without looking like she was about to keel over and die. [Us Weekly]

Anna Wintour, Virginia Smith, Sally Singer and Grace Coddington attend the Rag & Bone Women's fall 2013 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Skylight Studios at Moynihan Station on February 8, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Ben Gabbe/Getty Images)

Some people get really eye-vessel-poppingly mad at The Rules (and its latest incarnation Not Your Mother's Rules) but that always seemed like a massive waste of energy to me. It's so dumb, how can you get mad? It's like that one aunt you have on Long Island who always gives you Lord & Taylor coupons so you can buy some "you know, adult woman clothes" and looks like you just did heroin at the dinner table when you mention you're dating a musician. In short, it is 100% too silly to take seriously. Best just to laugh and take the coupons, nahmsaying?

Anyway, I read Not Your Mother's Rules cover to cover, and here is a short list of the few pros offered by the latest (updated for etiquette of The Internetz) tome of Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider's Gestapo-esque heteronormative courting ritual/mind-fuck The Rules:

• Unintentional hilarity.
• A heretofore-unwritten disclaimer that the Rules applies specifically to women who choose to self-destructively pursue uninterested partners and often find themselves devastated, rather than women at large. When you look at it as a sort of "when you've hit rock-bottom" thing for a very niche sort of human who could emotionally benefit from it—taking away all the gender-normative crap and focusing on the idea that it could help people who come off as desperate and insecure—it's a lot less severe. They clarify in the chapter title: "Do Whatever You Want Before You're Ready To Do The Rules"
• A section called "Hug Your Daughter and Other Rules For Mothers that might come off a little troll-esque and puritanical but generally offers good advice on how not to be a self-obsessed, withholding shit to your daughter so that she does not go looking for self-obsessed, withholding shits for life partners.

• A helpful reminder from aforementioned daughters (who have their own nuggets of wisdom in these pages) that sometimes playing Scramble or Words With Friends with an ex is a bad idea. (In the enduring words of Dave Matthews, "I did it, GUILTY AS CHAAAARGED.")

That's about it for the pros. Onto the cons.

Mold self into Courtney Stodden:

"Most men prefer long straight hair." "Curly do's can look messy, while long stick-straight hair looks more like one of those luscious shampoo ads.""Premature grey hair should be colored immediately." "Try highlights or go blonde." "Long nails will make you feel like a goddess, and so will long eyelashes."

"Tops that show some cleavage." "Men don't care for flat shoes [...] They want you to look feminine, in heels as high as you can stand." "Three inch hoop earrings in silver or gold." "A chunky gold watch."

Perhaps most depressing paragraph ever written:

Sometimes [women] do The Rules by accident because they didn't really think they liked the guy and call us triumphantly to say 'I didn't do The Rules, and we're engaged. But just because it was by accident doesn't mean it's not The Rules. It's kind of like losing ten pounds without really trying because you had a stomach flu.

Good girls don't:

Don't ask a guy out. Don't text a guy first. Don't sit or stand next to a guy first or flirt with him first. There should be at least half an hour time lapse between response text messages (which LUDICROUSLY correlate to the woman's age.)*

*hey maura can u help me my house is on fire
maura
hello
WHAT OH SORRY I WAS JUST BUSY DOING AWESOME ACTIVITIES LIKE A REAL INDEPENDENT WOMAN

Have at it, y'all. Or don't. That might be a better idea.

Another day, another heteronormative "family values"-promoting Susanne Venker piece on Fox News about these crazy Modern Independent Women with their shoulder pads and their college degrees who let feminists delude them into thinking that they're anything besides a dude's Happy Sauce receptacle. ("Those of us with children know better. We know little girls love their dolls and boys just want to kick that ball." Truly foolproof evidence, Venker. Checkmate.)

But there is one notable thing about this: a Fox intern almost definitely got sacked yesterday for choosing a photo of the wedding of same-sex couple Lela Mc Arthur and Stephanie Figarelle of Anchorage, Alaska to extoll the virtues of American-as-apple-pie hetero coupling. The shot of Mc Arthur and Figarelle was featured on HuffPo last year, detailing their Sleepless in Seattle-inspired ceremony at the Empire State Building—in fact, they were the first same-sex couple to be married at the landmark.

Some time after The Nation's Jessica Valenti drew attention to the flub on her Tumblr, the image was taken down.

Jessica Valenti/Tumblr
'To be happy, we must admit women and men aren't 'equal' [Fox News]

All of Valvo's looks from this year seem like something Angelia Jolie might slink around in at the Oscars: deep shades of merlot, burgundy and (of course) black, a collection described as "classic, moody" and "baroque." The designer says that the works of Edgar Allen Poe influenced the designs. Unfortunately, 25% of the projected attendance rate couldn't make this Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week show due to Storm Nemo.

Oh, little one. It's no big deal yet, but a decade from now, when you're riding shotty in your mom's SUV back from your buddy Kyle's party and she smells Bacardi Grapefruit on your breath, you better have this shit down.

[via Tastefully Offensive]

As we're all aware by now, the modern incarnation of Valentine's Day is nothing more than a consumer fabrication to get us to splash out on Godiva chocolate and a bouquet of Birds of Paradise for the person we hump on the regs. However, for those of us who are single, it can still be a crappy benchmark of the year—when you're on the train, for instance, and every dude is holding flowers and candy.

While there are plenty of gift guides and date ideas for lovers (this one! and this one, and this one...) here's one for those of us who are planning on having hate-sex with a guy who's kind of an asshole, or just making love to a box of Zebra Cakes, which is my plan.

Image via stocknadia/Shutterstock

You'll feel your H-O-T-T-E-S-T in this pair of irresistible Hanes men's sweatpants. Best accented with pizza stains and unwashed hair.

To celebrate the fact that this differentiates from the other 364 days of the year even though you might give zero craps about the guy you're hooking up with, procure some special Sir Richard's condoms. Size Extra Large, which is a pretty nice subtle compliment for the dude you're casually banging without being all "official" about it. It's called motherfucking romance, y'alls.

Don't just get drunk on Yellowtail sauv blanc like you would on any other day! Indulge in the horrific gastronomical misfire that is Pharell Williams' Qream, a majestic "liqueur for women," which Williams has described as "a truly elegant experience for the modern day queen and her court of friends." Find out for yourself. Qourself.

These are fancy Karuna face masks that Gwyneth Paltrow apparently likes a lot that are actually sheets of creepy face-shape cloth drenched in serum. You're gonna look like Jim Carey in that scene from The Cable Guy when they're at Medieval Times and he imitates Hannibal Lecter with the bacon strips on his face. But they are actually really soothing and great. +1,000 points if you answer the delivery guy at the door while wearing it for a S-E-X-X-X-Y surprise.

A perfect day for an unnecessary impulse purchase with that extra $175 you have lying around, and by "lying around" I mean you overdraw but you'll deal with it tomorrow. That's what I did when I bought this cute-ass purse on the Intarnetz.

Zebra cakes. 'Nuff said.

Please eschew the crappy rom-coms from 2004 playing back to back on TBS. Instead, starting the first season of a tense, gory procedural like Dexter is essential on Valentine's Day.

Stare at this picture of young, cute Jeff Goldblum.

Now this one.

As long as you gather these essentials, you'll be fine. Godspeed.

Regardless of how you feel about the polarizing writer/director Diablo Cody (Young Adult won me over, I gotta say), , it's nifty that she co-chaired the third year of the Athena Film Festival, an annual showcase for the works of women in the film industry. Vulture caught up with Cody to discuss Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty Oscar snub ("Are they still patting themselves on the back for giving it to a woman once before? Did her previous win [for The Hurt Locker] fill the quota or something? [...] I ran into the bedroom as my husband was getting dressed, yelling, "Kathryn Bigelow wasn't nominated! It's pathetic!") and this year's Athena-featured doc Women Aren't Funny.

Some people really get off on that [mentality], and if you argue with them, you're only feeding the trolls, indulging them, giving them that negative attention. But the fact that even some women would say women aren't funny is what's really frustrating. It's part of the problem. I feel like one of the reasons we're not hired more to write and direct is that some women are complacent and want to be part of the boys club, and part of savoring that acceptance is following the rules. And that's dangerous, to be scared to offend anyone.

While one-time exotic dancer Cody puts some emphasis on the "loophole women" who undermine others in order to be part of the boys' club, she does address the radically different response that former Tampa stripper Channing Tatum has received in Hollywood and in the public:

I find it very interesting that a man can be a stripper, talk about it openly, go on SNL and parody it in several sketches, and nobody accuses him of leveraging his sexuality to get ahead. They applaud it. And he did make a quality film, and it obviously did really well, and it had a certain pedigree - it wasn't trashy - but I do not think a woman would be treated the same way. I'm living proof of that. A woman's sexuality is dangerous and threatening and dirty, and for Channing, it's a charming tool in his arsenal. And I love Magic Mike. I love Channing. This is in no way a diss on him.

'Diablo Cody on the Athena Film Festival and Male Versus Female Strippers' [Vulture]

It's clearly time to consider gang rape a world epidemic, but one might wish it didn't have to come at such a high cost: In a tragic echo of the deceased 23-year-old New Delhi public bus gang rape victim, 17-year-old Western Cape girl Anene Booysen was found raped and badly mutilated at a construction site in Bredasdorp last Saturday. Reuters reports that Booysen had been cut open from her stomach to her genitals—one of her attackers had reached inside her stomach and actually extracted her intestines, replacing them with shards of a broken glass bottle.

She died of her injuries by 10 PM, just after identifying her attackers. Her foster mother Corlia Olivier's wrenching description of her Anene's final moments: "My child almost looked purple. She was in such a bad state. All her fingers were broken, her legs were broken. Her stomach had been cut up, you could see her intestines. Her throat was also slit open." Three men, aged 21, 22 and 23 (one of whom was allegedly an ex-boyfriend and childhood friend of Booysen's) have been connected with the crime, to be charged in magistrate court on Tuesday.

South Africa has widely been described of one of the world's "rape capitals," with 60,000 reported per year but an estimated 10 times as many going unreported. Yesterday South African President Jacob Zuma called Booysen's death "shocking", "cruel" and "inhumane." "Impose the harshest sentences on such crimes, as part of a concerted campaign to end this scourge in our society. [...] It has no place in our country. We must never allow ourselves to get used to these acts of base criminality to our women and children."

Zuma's is just one of the spiral of outraged reactions from civil unions, government officials and women's rights groups. The Young Communist League of South Africa has called for the specialty training of all police officers on sexual assault cases, and the ANCWL (African National Congress Women's League) is calling for a national enquiry into rape and gender-based violence in order to gather enough statistics to begin developing a solution.

However, this political cartoon on Booysen's Facebook remembrance page exhibits skepticism that this is more than just lip service to placate the population and prevent a New Delhi-style protest response.

'Zuma condemns Bredasdorp rape as shocking, cruel and inhumane' [Mail & Guardian]
'Third man arrested for Anene Booysen's rape and murder' [Sowetan Live]
'The agony of South Africa's daughter Anene Booysen. The agony of South Africa.' [Daily Maverick]

Tom Daley dives during practice on day 1 of the British Gas Diving Championships on February 8, 2013 in Plymouth, England. (Photo by Harry Engels/Getty Images)

Everyone knows that only women are qualified to write romance novels, right? Men are supposed to be writing books about sharks or beer, DOY. Sadly, we're not so far from the days when Mary Anne Evans had no choice but to take on the nom de plume George Eliot in order to be taken seriously as a writer (although this mentality still haunts the modern lit world in the form of "chick lit" book covers on non-chick lit novels, e.g. Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep).

A popular romance novelist named Jessica Blair, the author of 22 romantic tomes based in Whitby, North Yorkshire, has been unmasked as 89-year-old war grandfather and World War II veteran Bill Spence. When he penned his first 19th century Whitby romance in 1993, he had already written 36 Westerns, a war novel, and one non-fiction book about whaling (dude's hella versatile). Spence's publishers advised him that the romance novel's sales would fare better if he took on a female pen name. Hence, Jessica Blair was born. Spence had no qualms about taking on a female pen name for his novels:

"I suppose some men may suppose their masculinity had been questioned, but it has never bothered me... You do not say no to publishers. I was just very glad I had found someone who wanted to print my books, and it didn't bother me at all that I'd been given a female name."

Spence also adds that he adores writing romance novels—the Blair books, incidentally, seem a classier step or two above the Harlequin bosom-heavers at the grocery store—and probably won't be returning to any of his former genres at this point. As for the most important woman in Spence's life, above even "Jessica Blair," he says: "My wife, Joan, who died sadly a few years ago thought [the female pen name] was amusing, but she has been a great support to me throughout my years of writing."

Jessica Blair's latest, In The Silence of the Snow, comes out later this week.

'Bills and boon! 'Female' romance author Jessica Blair unmasked as 89-year-old grandfather' [Daily Mail]
Official website of Jessica Blair

Our very own wealthy, psuedo-intellectual Brooklyn-brownstone-dwelling polemic feminist (although, who knows, she might rankle at the label of "feminist") Katie Roiphe's latest piece on Slate, primarily addresses this much passed-around NYT article and the nuances of Facebook flirtations. See, KT thinks it's worse than old-timey cheating.

they can represent very intense fantasies, distilled versions of romantic yearning, including its darker, more narcissistic sides, honest articulations, for better or for worse, of the inner life.

Or wait, no, better? Or just lamer? I'm confused.

In some sense, you can see how the various forms of Internet rapport allow you to transcend, to go halfway, to dabble, to hedge, to not really cheat. There may be something cowardly in this form of cheating, some slight lack of investment, some protective holding back.

It's very easy to hate Roiphe for, oh, say, suggesting that the success of 50 Shades of Grey is owed to the modern career woman's sexual domination fantasies, or whatever latest liberal-minded trend she (usualy wrongly) deems ubiquitous.

It's even easier to hate her because these issues she takes it upon herself to deflate as some sort of self-assigned cultural anthropologist really only exist at, say, the Boerum Hill all-organic dinner parties she frequents. For instance, is there an over-sensitive sexual harassment workplace culture? Maybe in Roiphe's world, but she doesn't seem to acknowledge or care that the majority of offices across America still have a distinctly insensitive sexual harassment culture, preferring instead to bolster her argument with quotes and anecdotes from her niche of bourgeoisie friends.

Okay, so that said, I just read In Praise of Messy Lives and I realized that it's actually quite sad: Roiphe's entire oeuvre is based on the underlying idea that 1950s, in all its three-martini-lunching, child-neglecting, sexist, racist, adulterous glory, were cooler, better. (Better for whom, exactly? Roiphe contradicts herself by opening Praise with a defensive paen to her "swinging" single motherhood in the eye of a judgmental society—"I go off in a car to meet a man at a hotel bar. This will seem like the wrong structure to many people." Sorry, shit wouldn't fly back then.) Saddest of all is that more than once in multiple essays, including this piece, she cites infamous misogynists Updike, Roth and Bellow as hallowed voices of these "better times."

[T]hese are undoubtedly safe adulterers, cagey adulterers; they are not running, in other words, the way Updike's Rabbit ran.

If nothing else, it's depressing to me that such a well-read woman as Roiphe won't deign to use any hard-drinking, hard-fucking lady writers to cite as her ideals.

'I Love You. Now Text Me.' [Slate]

Nicole Miller's fall 2013 runway presentation at this year's Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York answered the time-honored question: What's a one-time Hot Topic-clad 15-year-old to wear now that she's all grown up? Vintage-inspired boxy menswear in shades of black and plaid, obviously. Plus some granny brocade and one awesome citrus ombre dye job.

I was psyched when Brooklyn Tattoo artist and taxidermy artist
Sue Jeiven invited me to her Greenpoint apartment for a private class in anthropomorphic taxidermy—the preparation and display of dead animals in an humanlike elaborate mise-en-scene, complete with tiny human accoutrements and frocks. (All of the animals Jeiven works with were already deceased; the mice she and I will be using were the frozen kind used to feed snakes at a pet store.) See Jeiven's work in the video below.

Jeiven is pale and petite, with full tattoo sleeves and a black pageboy haircut, and her apartment is strewn with various stuffed forest animals— chipmunks, squirrels, mice. The composite result is a skewed Snow White effect, like seven Juggalo little people might stomp in at any second. She told me how she came across various pieces of apartment decor. Spoiler alert: She did not pick them up at Bed, Bath & Beyond. For example: "It got hit by a car, then a cop came and shot it in the head. I pulled over and dragged it into the forest and tied it to a tree and left it there. I came back two months later and got this." The bullet hole is visible in the deer skull's temple.

Nearby sits an unfinished project that Jeiven was doing on commission for a Norah Jones music video, ten mice posed in a variety of ways on something that looks like Astro Turf. On a window ledge sat a number of "bases" for projects, objects that Jeisen found in thrift stores. I chose a repurposed jewelry/music box whose melody was irritatingly familiar until I realize (hand to God!) it was the exact same one as the music box in the dead girl's room in Silence of the Lambs.

She sets out two mice—one for her, one for me—on the kind of vintage pastel TV trays your grandma might have and runs a blowdryer over them to thaw.

When I tried to cut open my frozen mouse, the blade was too dull-it was kind of like trying to cut into flan with a pipe cleaner. Jeiven handed me a straight razor. "This one isn't a male, but sometimes they have huge balls and you just have to cut them off."

Over the next four hours I realize just how painstaking this work is, particularly the degloving process, which involved peeling the limbs out and cutting the ligaments with a kitchen scissor so the mouse's outsides and its outsides create a sort of Rorschach stamp shape. Jeiven calls the completion of this stage "mouse purse" because it kind of looks like one. (The photographer and I call it "look away briefly.")

In the bowels of the mouse's stomach lies what Jeiven has nicknamed the shitbag, a darker area of the lower intestines which she reminds me repeatedly not to puncture or else we would have to evacuate her apartment for at least three days, at which point I get too nervous and hand it over. Jeisen completes the necessary step with the brisk, broad efficiency of a drunk person digging into a Popeyes wing.

If you ever taxidermized a thing before, you know where the "X-eyes" of death in cartoons come from, and you're familiar with that feeling you have by time you actually get to them, when you poke around the socket and squeeze them out and replace them with a bead or pushpin or other tiny human-created nugget, which is that you actually feel like you're doing the thing a favor because it looks approximately one thousand percent less dead, and then you realize you've just landed in the Venn Diagram overlap of funeral home embalmers and serial killers. Oops!

Jeisen sometimes teaches underpriced, quickly sold-out anthro-taxi classes at the Brooklyn Observatory. "One [student] was wearing a raccoon hat, and I asked her if she did it herself, and she said she bought it on Etsy," she says, noting that the class's twee sensibility often contrasts with the dirty, resourceful nature of her own practice. After attending some pricey taxidermy courses, she scoured places like Duane Reade for cheaper alternatives to their methods. Her tools include nail files, clear nail polish, clayworking tools, pipe cleaners, hairdryers and laundry powder. (She will be coming out with a book in the next year or two.)

I emerged with the creation you are looking at and a new respect for people who stuff animals, although I opted against putting my mouse in a dress. It seemed undignified, somehow. The next day, while drinking with a friend, I told him what I'd made and how I couldn't wait to hang it up on my wall.

"That might be a boner killer," he said.

I was drunk and replied "I don't give a fuck." I'm sober now. Still don't!

Image via Filip Miletic/Shutterstock

Yes, ringtone-voiced heartthrob El Beebo will play both musical guest and host of Saturday Night Live tonight. Throughout Storm Nemo last night, loyal Beliebers were huddled outside Rockefeller Center on the SNL standby line, and received ample reward: some pizza from the manboy himself.

Do you think he'll rival Justin Timberlake on the double-duty front?

Have a good weekend!

Yesterday afternoon Chris Brown wrecked his Porsche after being chased down by the rabid paparazzi on the way to a charity event, according to the Beverly Hills Police Department. Brown's PR rep (#2 most thankless job after "professional human shit shoveler") explained how it happened:

"He was in his vehicle by himself headed to the Debbie Allen Dance Academy for a Symphonic Love Foundation event when two vehicles cut him off. The occupants jumped out, with cameras, and aggressively approached his vehicle. In an effort to remove himself from the situation, he began to back down an alley at which point his was cut off by two additional vehicles. He is okay."

Brown managed to make it to the event (see above), as well as the Roc Nation pre-Grammys brunch at West Hollywood's Soho House, where he and a concerned Rihanna "were photographed gazing into each other's eyes, with RiRi putting her arms around Chris' neck. She appears to be really worried about Chris." Keep in mind also that, ironically, the 2009 assault charge is almost four years old to the day—it occurred after Clive Davis's pre-Grammy party. [E!, Hollywood Life]

• I liked Leonardo DiCaprio a lot more back before he took this hiatus from acting. These days all he seems to do is high-five Jonah Hill over the head of a topless woman as the three frolic in an astonishingly clear ocean and talk to dudes from Entourage about how much punani he's pulling.

  "Leo talked about the fact that he is sleeping with ‘multiple women' right now," says our earwitness. "He was totally open about it. Kevin [Connolly] looked at Leo and told him, ‘I want to be you.'

  "Leo replied, ‘Everyone does.' He was acting very nice, but is very arrogant," says the insider.

  I got two words for you, pal: J. Edgar. [NYDN]

• Michael Lohan is reportedly writing a tell-all called I Am Not Daddy Dearest ... If I Can Turn It All Around, You Can Too! as a response to Dina Lohan's tell-all. So you can buy both of them, or you can buy neither of them and be happier. [TMZ]
• Meanwhile, speaking of bad influences, Lindsay Lohan has temporarily holed up in Courtney Love's former digs, rent free. [TMZ]
• Dustin Hoffman, a man after my own heart, likes Patrón and In-N-Out burgers during awards season. [Page Six]
• Nick Lachey is taking his teeny son Camden on tour with him. [People]
• The Wanted singer Max George's ideal woman is "anyone in Hollywood." [Times of India]
• Christina Ricci will star in NBC comedy Girlfriend In A Coma, which focuses on a woman who wakes up from a coma and discovers she has a kid. I miss the days when she was sexually experimenting with the little kid from The Ice Storm while wearing a Nixon mask. [THR]
• Charlie Sheen made a video in which he pleaded with killer Chrisopher Dorner—who called Sheen "effin awesome" in his manifesto—to call him and end his murder spree. [TMZ]
• Before real-life Slytherin met Spencer Pratt met Heidi Montag, he was "way more evil than I am now. I was in all these secret societies, places where powerful men hang out, there were rituals, things you wear... It started at university. I'm not a part of it anymore. Just places where powerful, wealthy people help each other along." [Contact Music]
• Jill Kelley's loved ones wish everyone would stop calling her a trollop. [Page Six]
• Paul Feig has some choice words for film critic Rex Reed, who called Melissa McCarthy "tractor-sized," "humongous" and a "female hippo":
  

  For his catty and school bully name-calling of the supremely talented Melissa McCarthy, I cordially invite Mr. Rex Reed to go fuck himself.

  — Paul Feig (@paulfeig) February 8, 2013

• Justin Bieber was unfazed by the blizzard hitting New York during his SNL episode last night: "I'm Canadian." [Us Weekly]
• El Beebo also (accidentally?) spelled Lorne Michaels' name wrong on Instagram. Lauren! He might be the only person in showbiz to do that and continue working/breathing. [HuffPo]
• Kim Kardashian inexplicably posed like the Statue of Liberty for Kanye West as the two vacationed in Rio. [People]
• Kate Gosselin says that the Internet is a big bully. [Us Weekly]
• A SWAT team was called in to deal with crowds during Kylie and Kendall Jenner's promo appearance for their PacSun fashion line. Every SWAT trainee's dream, surely. [Daily Mail]
• Here are some stills from Supreme Court judge Courtney Stodden's upcoming music video for her "song" (just how bendy is the English language?), "Reality." [NYDN]
• Oh my God, this seal is named Yule Log and he's BRITISH and they had to put him on A DIET. I'm melting. [Digital Spy]

Oh my God, this is just—gahhhh. I just have something in my eye. Like a speck of soot, or a ficus, or Cleveland or something. On NPR's Morning Edition, Bonnie Brown, an intellectually disabled woman and single mom who works part-time at Wendy's, was interviewed by her precocious daughter Myra. You can tell they really love each other. Among the subjects touched on is the way that Myra has to defend her mom from cruel stares and questions.

"What's the hardest thing that you've overcome?" Myra asks.
"Being hurt from people," Bonnie replies. Kleenex time, fuuuuuuu. Listen to the full interview over on NPR.

Image via Rob Marmion/Shutterstock

Stuart told the press that this season's collection at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week was modeled after the British model Stella Tennant and her friends ("I was thinking about the beautiful dinners and the charades she and her friends play, and the great performances they see at the end of the night").

But these looks remind me of coquettish torch singer Jessica Rabbit, devoted wife of Roger. In shades of red, blush and black, with intricate detailing and stand-alone collars at the neckline, it'd be perfect for Mrs. Rabbit if she got out of the seedy partially-animated nightclub scene and spun remixes at an Oscar afterparty.

Actor Bill Murray passes caps to fans on the 17th hole during the third round of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am at Pebble Beach Golf Links on February 9, 2013 in Pebble Beach, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

He don't give a shit.

Most of us remember Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S. I named my first fish after her when I was in the fifth grade! No joke. Blackwell had to put aside her dreams of being a surgeon and stay with her regular practice after catching a baby patient's eye infection and going half blind. (Doesn't that feel like a really on-the-nose metaphor? LADIES? WE CAN'T HAVE IT ALL, LADIES.)

Anyway, so yeah, Elizabeth Blackwell! But have you heard of Mary Walker? The Atlantic has an extensive article on Walker's quest to become an official female physician for the Civil War's wounded Union soldiers. An ardent abolitionist and firm believer in women's rights, Walker stated her case in a letter to President Lincoln in 1864.

His response: "The Medical Department of the army is an organized system in the hands of men supposed to be learned in that profession and I am sure it would injure the service for me, with strong had, to thrust among them anyone, male or female, against their consent." In other words, a 19th century version of Talk to the hand, you crazy bat.

However, Walker wrote in a letter to a friend that she "was confident that the God of justice would not allow the war to end without its developing into a war of liberation." After being turned down in an official capacity by the Secretary of War, Walker found an Indiana hospital that oh-so-graciously allowed her to work, pro bono and sans title. Full disclosure: She was offered the title of nurse, but she turned it down. The head of the hospital offered to share his salary, but she turned it down. The latter is particularly noble/stubborn, since she was cash-poor thanks to " a long divorce with a philandering husband who impregnated at least two patients."

Many of her surgical amputees wrote to Walker that she had done a good job and their limbs were functional once again. She designed her own uniform and was recognized by the New York Times ("She carries herself amid the camp with a jaunty air of dignity well calculated to receive the sincere respect of the soldiers"). Sort of like Molly Pitcher, except instead of water it was cutting men's infected legs off, like in that hella grisly hospital-tent scene from Gone With The Wind. NBD!

Finally, after becoming a popular figure in modern lore, Walker was formally named the only female assistant surgeon in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Although she was given the standard uniform, she wrote, "I let my curls grow while I was in the army so that everybody would know that I was a woman." HAM, you guys.

In 1864, she was taken to a POW camp by the Confederate Army, where she was possibly raped, starved and kept in unsanitary quarters. Being a Yankee, a fan of abolition AND women's rights didn't exactly endear her to the Confederates. By the time she was traded back to the Union for a male surgeon, she had developed a partial muscular atrophy that never healed, and retired shortly afterwards.

And here she is around 1911 in an awesome top hat. Baller.

'Mary Walker's Quest to be Appointed as a Union Doctor in the Civil War' [The Atlantic]