My Black Milk collection and the Big Bang Theory debacle

So you may have heard about the Black Milk Clothing debacle, which started on Star Wars Day (May the 4th) and has finally kind of petered off, after popping up on the usual internet cesspools of Buzzfeed and Salon and Yahoo! News. Here’s the meme that sparked the controversy: On the right is Amy Farrah Fowler, a neurobiologist from the …

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Guest Post on The Toast!

Surfactants Are Everywhere, aka Stop Being Terrified of Chemicals

In case I haven’t already managed to bombard you with this on other channels, an article I wrote was just published on The Toast, about surfactants and not being scared of chemicals. I’m very proud of it – click through here to read more! (I have to add a special thanks to the lovely and talented Cassie of Reluctant Femme …

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Disney Princesses Challenge, aka I Hate Disney Part 8: Ariel

“Screw everyone, girl’s got needs!” Oh, Ariel. The traditional tale: Mermaid goes to sea witch and swaps amazing voice for really painful legs, mad dancing skills and a chance at eternal life. She tries to win the prince. She fails. Her sisters convince said witch to make a knife – if she kills the prince she gets to be a …

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Disney Princesses Challenge, aka I Hate Disney Part 7: Belle

Beauty and the Beast (1991) is a slight improvement on the usual princess mold. Belle is a bookworm, and isn’t doing the endless chores that the earlier princesses love so much, although she’s still all over the animals. And the inanimate objects are positively adorable – if you don’t love Chip and the Angela Lansbury-voiced Mrs Potts, you don’t have …

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Disney Princesses Challenge, aka I Hate Disney Part 6: Pocahontas

(This is a tad late, sorry!) Faces of woe! The third last Disney princess, Pocahontas (1995), isn’t really a “princess” – and it’s the only one here based on an actual historical person. It’s pretty loosely based – they’ve changed her age, love interest, home, story, appearance – ok, they’ve just kept her name and ethnicity, and the names of …

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Disney Princesses Challenge, aka I Hate Disney Part 5: Cinderella

“I’m staring so hard into your eyes I’m going to forget the rest of your face. That’s part of my charm!” Cinderella (1950) is one of the classic Disney movies, and in my mind, the Disney version is the definitive version. As you might have come to expect after reading my whinging over the past few weeks, there are a …

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Disney Princesses Challenge, aka I (only kind of) Hate Disney (this week) Part 3: Mulan

Hurray! This week on Michelle’s Disney cheese and whine hour, we have Mulan (1998). Since I’m the slanty-eyed gook in the banner at the top of this blog, you’d be right to guess that this is a Disney film with which I have a particularly strong relationship. I watched this as an impressionable tween when it first came out, and …

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Disney Princesses Challenge, aka I Hate Disney Part 2: Snow White

Time for another edition of Ranty Lab Muffin! Today we’re dealing with Disney’s first animated feature: 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It feels wrong to lay into a senior citizen of a film from contemporary perspectives, so let’s quickly breeze through a few obvious points that I largely covered last week in my grumpy Jasmine rant: – Hot …

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