According to the Vogue Book of Etiquette (1948, Simon & Schuster), this is the polite and proper way to use the word “dog”:

DOG should not be used instead of “hound,” meaning one of the pack of hounds. “Dog” is correct in speaking of sporting dogs, such as retrievers and pointers, which hunt separately and not in packs. The only correct use of the word “dog” in connection with hounds is in making a sex differentiation: “The dogs are in this kennel, the bitches on the other side.”

From now on, Pop Effect shall adhere to this usage—and this usage only. Thank you, Ryan, for the exceedingly useful gift.

Ugh, guys. I went and joined Twitter. What was I thinking? I was so adamantly opposed, but PopPhoto.com set up an account to publicize the site (which is the home of American Photo and Popular Photography), so I joined to demonstrate my support for the cause. And two seconds later, I felt like a sellout. But truth be told, it’s an extremely useful tool for media outlets. And me not joining out of ideological spite is just as foolish as magazine editors who refuse to blog. So, my twitter will be work-related ish. I’m going to post links to highlights from the magazine in the hopes that I will trick people into visiting our site. It will also be mildly entertaining*, but of course work-appropriate because it’s under my actual name. You can check it out here.

*which of course means I’ll be dishing on my favorite shirtless mutant/actor/singer/dancer

From the Department of “No Shit, Sherlock”: The New York Times reported that the bad economy and constant threat of joblessness (and the resulting homelessness?) is stressing people out. To read about what you already know, click here!

In related news, Pop Effect has found evidence that articles like this make me want to punch The New York Times in the metaphorical face. The results of these findings are still being confirmed by My Guns.

Side note: when I did a google image search for “stress”, it gave me the above picture. But it’s the opposite of stress because it makes me so happy.

This is not a joke. It’s not even an exaggeration. Last night I dreamt of Marc Jacobs–designed cookware. Could this be an amazing idea for the Marc Jacobs brand? Or, a sign that I have a brain tumor? You decide.

I was just thinking the other day, “Wow, I haven’t blogged about Harold, Kumar, or Harold and Kumar go to White Castle in, like, forever.” So luckily it turns out something big happened a few days ago that remedies this problem. Harold cut his hair! JK/Psych. With the real story, here’s “Ali”:

Okay guys, as you’ve probably heard by now Kal Penn—better known as Kumar, or even better known as the most gorgeous man to ever eat a vegetarian Crave Case at White Castle [ed note: if Bridget got the sex change operation she's been vying for, she could rival him; she would make an attractive vegetarian she-male]—just got a job in the White House. This is fantastic for several reasons:

First, it means that Obama is pretty cool. How many of our presidents do you think actually saw Harold and Kumar go to White Castle?  Actually I take that back, I could see GWB being all over that stupid, stoner humor.  But I bet Bush didn’t get the racial undertones, while Obama totally understood where Roldy and Kumar were coming from.

Secondly, Kumar’s hire further diversifies politics. First it was a black president, then it was a handful of Chinese American cabinet appointments, and now it’s an Indian American becoming associate director in the White House office of public liaison! Has any other Administration looked this much like a Benetton ad?

Thirdly, this means that Kumar will be living in Washington, D.C. It means that I could potentially run into him at a bar and we could fall in love and get married.  Or else I could get him drunk, “forget” a condom and entrap him. Either way, we end up together 4ever!

Maybe in Ali’s next blog, she could explain what an “associate director in the White House office of public liaison” does. If it has anything to do with deciphering the symptoms of a seemingly complex and unexplainable illness within just an hour, then I totally get why Obama hired him. Also, another note to Ali: I hear pinholes are pretty effective.

Last night I went to Picholine, a swanky French restaurant up by the Metropolitan Opera. It’s one of those old-timey, Central Park West deals where the clientele are either on their way to the opera or they’re just out for a Tuesday dinner because it’s a “neighborhood” place. Which makes me laugh. Picholine is very close to Tavern on the Green.

Anyway, my friend Fiona had a gift card she got for filling out a survey, and though it was for a substantial amount, we knew we’d only be able to sit at the tables near the bar and get cheese and wine. And even then, we’d have to each put in an extra $20. Which was fine; it was an ideal way to be extravagant without actually spending much.

What made it truly awesome though was that, upon our arrival, Fiona realized she knew the fromager. He worked at Picholine’s sister restaurant, Artisanal, when she took her book club out for a meal. Fiona and the fromager (an ideal movie title) had bonded over cheese and wine—so much so that Fiona wrote him a thank you note later. And he remembered! So he personally selected 6 cheeses for us and suggested two wines each. We were in heaven.

But when we were getting ready to leave, out came a tasting sample of this weird (but delicious) sorbet/foam, then a chocolate molten torte with dulce de leche ice cream and earl grey marshmallow cream, and two glasses of port (which I’ve discovered, since France, I quite like). So after all this very personal attention at a fancy restaurant, you can imagine how excited we were to pay with a gift card. I half expected them to say it was a fake. But it worked, and we left a good tip. Especially when we realized the fromager was there for one night only. It was a special night.

Wait, this was a genuine blog post. Do such things exist? Weird.

Well guys, National Puppy Day is over. I fear that I didn’t savor it like I should have. I watched a video of a puppy trying to walk, and that’s it. What is wrong with me? Now I have to wait a whole year until National Puppy Day comes again. But on the upside, we have a whole year to plan how to celebrate the next National Puppy Day. I’m pretty sure after I publish this, there will be a flood of suggestions in the comments section.

Not that long ago, New York magazine did a story that posed the question of whether twitter personalities are edging out moderately successful bloggers. How can this be true? How is it that twittering is already making blogging obsolete? I’m still getting used to the fact that my time working at a magazine (as we currently know it) has an eventual expiration date, but I cannot handle the notion that my new blog could be better served as a twitter because of all the stupid people who are obsessed with Twitter updates. How are blogs being so quickly overrun? Isn’t Twitter, like, three months old? When will Twitter be overrun? Tomorrow? Maybe by a service that lets you just publish an emoticon that represents how you feel. Until another site let’s you choose half an emoticon because one is too tiring to select. And then a third site will just have one-stroke punctuation posts. I should prepare for the future and patent that last idea. The punctuation lexicon:  ! = excited, ? = confused,  ; = “there’s shit in my eye”,  ~ = “I’m feeling saucy”.

Where does this end?

In all seriousness though, Twittering won’t completely replace blogs. Of course it won’t. Without Perez Hilton’s celebrity penis drawings, a story about Miley Cyrus or Britney Spears just won’t make sense to the average reader. People need a visual reminder of things like that. “Oh right, she’s a ho. Now I can put this story about jean shorts into context.”

New York magazine (and Ali) laid the whole “what gender will the sex-changing comic book character be in the film adaptation of Thor?” issue to rest: Loki will possibly be played by Josh Hartnett, which means it’ll be pre-sex change [because Loki was originally a man (and Josh Hartnett currently is a man)]. But seriously, I’m already over the sex changing comic book character BECAUSE it’s not as saucy as I had previously thought. Dan explained it to me in depth, and Loki just gets resurrected as a girl instead of a dude. I thought he legitimately had a sex change, via operation, because he felt as if he couldn’t relate as a man anymore. That would have been brilliant. I’ll direct an alternate Thor movie and have it released at the same time, only mine will have the operation. It’ll be like when Armageddon and Deep Impact were released at the same time. I’m not sure which movie I’d prefer to be in that scenario though.

Here’s a super fun game that I kind of sort of came up with on my own (a claim that shall remain undisputed, so long as Jackie doesn’t read this). I like to call it: Babelfish it! ©. First, I take a well-known quote from a movie, then translate it into another language through the use of Babelfish. Then, I post the translation here with the language “key”. The reader (Dan, probably; maybe Kate Winslet) then translates it back to English and tries to guess through the hilarious language what the original quote was. Here’s a little taste:

Ich bin in einem Glasfall vom Gefühl. (German)

What popular film could this be from?? You must Babelfish It! ©.