• Picture it: the Jezebel nursing home, the year 2068. We'll turn on our headchips to watch the disembodied skull of Oprah host her show, and Jennifer Aniston, having been cryogenically frozen, will have been unfrozen just to make an appearance. Oprah will still ask Jen how she feels about Angelina Jolie and Jen will still think that what Angelina did was "very uncool." We may die, but this story will live on forever.
• We found out the hard way that putting garlic up your nono is a no no.
• Did we earn our yeast infections the same way Bikini Cory earned her nickname?
• Joan Didion: officially more depressing than the mere existence of Bikini Cory.
• Not depressing at all: this almost unbearably cute precocious French toddler. We just want to hear lil' Amelie say "crocodeeel" all day long.
• Maybe she should have a cute-off with Maru, the box loving kitty from Japan.

• Speaking of kitties! We said Hello, Blingee Kitty at the Sanrio Luxe opening.
• We searched at home and abroad for for broads in our booze cabinets.
• Obama may have been elected, but as long as fugly shoes clog up our stores, the national nightmare will continue.
• You guys, it's Friday. So indulge in some hot food porn and have a good weekend!

When one gets yeast infections easily — at the first whiff of an antibiotic or the slightest weakening of the immunities — you know the early warning signs, a slight burning itch that predates the proverbial "cottage-cheese-like discharge" (ew) by a few days. When I felt it the other night, I cursed my bad luck: I didn't feel like the hassle of calling the doctor and dreaded the chemical burn of the Monistat egg. (I like the little egg.) In any event, the pharmacy was closed for the night.

I took to the internet, hoping to find a useful home remedy. And, as is generally the case with homeopathic remedies, the answer was garlic — which, if you believe some of these sites, is prevented from conquering penicillin only due to sinister medical conspiracies involving drug companies. Having, on the internet's advice, attempted placing a garlic clove in my ear (ear infection) and eating raw cloves (a cold) in the past with no great rate of success, I was dubious. But I was eager to stop the infection in its tracks, and lord knows I had a full braid of garlic in the kitchen. What did I have to lose? Besides, I liked the idea of brewing my own cures and outwitting the medical industry with ancient female know-how.

According to the various sites I consulted, the treatment was no more complicated than slipping in a peeled clove and going to bed. Said Midwifery Today, with authority, "the reason that the treatment is done at bedtime is that there is a connection between the mouth and the vagina. The moment the garlic is placed in the vagina, the taste of the garlic travels up to the mouth. Most people will find this strong flavor annoying during the day, so the treatment is recommended for nighttime. " As someone who's never fully understood why lead can't be turned into gold, this explanation made complete sense to me. Although a few sites recommended wrapping the garlic in a bit of cheesecloth, I deemed this a frill. Besides, I didn't have any cheesecloth handy and was sick of bringing cheese into the conversation.

Luckily my boyfriend was working a night shift; I can think of few things less erotic than slipping into bed with intimate love on your mind and coming into contact with a garlic clove in someone's vaginal canal, like a secret vampire deterrent or something. I tossed and turned. I fancied I could feel the garlic moving through my body to my mouth. I could smell it. I had a garlic clove up my vagina.

At three a.m. I leapt up, furious. The garlic was not working! I decided to up the dosage, which apparently meant chopping a clove in half so the antioxidant juices could better make contact. First I had to get the old one out, which was no easy matter; the garlic clove had migrated. I had a moment of panic when I was convinced I'd never be able to retrieve it. I managed to do so only by means of complicated muscle exercises which do not bear getting into but will doubtless come in handy should I ever need to birth a baby, After this narrow escape, I decided to wrap the new, higher dosage in — well, I didn't have any cheesecloth, so I used a clean scrap of vintage handkerchief. I went back to bed. And, then, the garlic hit. It was agony — far, far worse burning than anything I'd ever experienced from Monistat — which hurts. I stuck it out for three minutes or so, then could bear it no longer. Luckily the tail of cloth I had made facilitated things this time around.

The experiment was over; it had been an abject failure —or I had. The next day, two showers, a bath and a dose of Monistat later, I was on the mend. But when I went to my mom's house for dinner and she produced chicken with forty cloves of garlic...my appetite was diminished.

Vesna's Burger — Big Brother Uncut [YouTube]

P.S. No animals were drugged in the making of this video.

I have been shoving garlic up my vagina for the past 24 hours — a home remedy that I'm hoping will kill whatever is making my crotch froth. This infection could be the result of a number of things. I recently got off antibiotics for a gnarly bug bite on my leg. Everyone knows antibiotics are one of the leading causes for the yeast beast.

I also let a dude with some unsavory-smelling grillz go down on me last week. Probably not the cleanest thing I could let near my cooch. On Friday night, my band played at a house party. I woke up the next day on the couch, still in my nude suits: Layers of full-body pantyhose, all of which were drenched in beer. After all the boozin', antibiotics, and general dirty play, it really came as no surprise that things got stanky in my panties by Sunday.

To counteract that, I wrapped a garlic clove in cheesecloth and wedged in my vagina. I was sure I had arrived in Yeast Infection City. But then Slut Machine told me about this study on Science Daily, about how women are commonly misdiagnosing themselves with yeast infections. She suggested I try out this Vagisil Screening Kit to see if it really was a yeast infection after all.

The test is fast and easy — you just wash your hands, insert the smaller end of the swab (with the pH paper on it), and press it against your vaginal wall for five seconds, then take out the stick and match it to a level on the color chart pH guide the test provides. Mine came out looking like the color of baby poop. It was what I feared: Definitely not a yeast infection. Either I'm battling Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) or Trichomoniasis (Trich). BV is a bacterial infection, where as a yeast infection is a fungal one. Trich is the same thing that Charlotte got on Sex in the City when her vagina had to go on antidepressants. It is caused by a parasite and that is totally nast. If it is the Trich, I blame it all on stink teeth. Either way, I need to get my legs in the stirrups and take care of this mess for good. Good thing I was too broke to buy Monistat, because apparently if you have BV and you treat it with an over-the-counter yeast infection medication, you can aggravate the condition. I can, however, still slather plain yogurt all over the place to ease the burn and plug it up with garlic to keep up the fight until I can get a doctor to look at my flaming lips.

Common Misdiagnosis: Most Women Believe They Have A Yeast Infection When They Don't [Science Daily]

• Older women, younger men, can it work? CNN investigates the truly tired topic of $500K-worth-of-plastic-surgery-cougars and the men who love them. [CNN]
  
• You know how when you have serious itching "down there" you assume it's a case of the crotch monkey's and start medicating yourself with Monistat? Apparently, most women who assume they have a yeast infection are, in fact, wrong and administering meds like Monistat only encourages yeast infections to fester in the future. Guh-reat. [Science Daily]
  
• Medical research shows that breast milk is far more nutritional than manufactured formulas. Remember that, Bill Maher, the next time you tell Maggie Gyllenhaal to put away her titties at Da Silvano. [Science Daily]
  
• P.S. Maggie check out the latest nursing top that's guaranteed to get little Ramona into Mensa! [Science Daily]

• You know those detox diets where you drink some bizarrely colored drink for five days and poo your brains out? Yeah, well, some of them are great for you and some of them aren't, so do your research before you spend a week on the toilet trying to lose five pounds. [CNN]
• Eight hundred anti-choice protesters picketed a soon-to-open Planned Parenthood in Aurora, Illinois this weekend. Another protest, this one a "Men's Vigil", is scheduled for tomorrow night. Ugh, fucktards. [Chicago Tribune]
• An 18-year-old man who stabbed a 16-year-old girl may claim that the acne drug Accutane drove him to it. If acne drugs made you homicidal, we would have hurt a whole lot of people between the ages of 14 and 21. [The Pittsburgh Channel]
• One woman was raped and three were sexually assaulted in their homes near the University of Maryland in College Park. Police think these assaults may be related to a series of Peeping Tom incidents earlier in the year, and believe that the culprit may be a student since the incidents stopped during the summer when school was not in session. [WBALtv.com]
• Eva Crane, who abandoned a career in nuclear physics to pursue her passion for bees, has died at the age of 95. [NY Times]
• The NY Times has a fascinating story about a 33-year old woman who discovered she has an extremely high risk of getting breast cancer and decided to get a preventative mastectomy. [NY Times]
• When it comes to getting a note from your doctor to take sick leave, male doctors are more likely to give the go ahead to male patients than female doctors are to okay sick leave for female patients. [Science Daily]
• One-fifth of male bosses in the UK won't give women of "child bearing age" a job. Coincidentally, 100% of women in the UK wouldn't give those men a blow job if their lives depended on it! [Guardian UK]
• Clinical evidence proves that exercise can help fight depression. So can a bottle of pills, which is our preferred route. [LA Times]