Blog Posts by Piper Weiss, Shine Staff

Another day, another photo of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt. The four year old tomboy gets more attention from paparazzi than her parents. Forget about her other siblings.

Frothing at the mouth over celebrity babies is nothing new. Suri Cruise, Kingston Rossdale and the Beckham boys have fueled the growth spurt of baby blogs. But there's just something about Shiloh that has women who wouldn't ordinarily care about a celebrity kid, scrolling through photo after photo, sending links to friends and harping over every detail in the latest blurred image. So I asked three different types of women-- a mother of a newborn, a single woman who doesn't have kids and doesn't ordinarily follow celebrity photo news, and a writer who's job in part requires her to comb through photos of celebrities.
All three have found themselves, if guiltily, falling into Shiloh spirals.

So lets have it out. What's Shiloh got that other celebrity babies don't?

A new mom's perspective:
She's living my childhood fantasy.

The Real Housewives of DC step into the ring (Photo via Bravo TV)
"A gladiator was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their legal and social standing and their lives by appearing in the arena...Gladiators offered audiences an example of Rome's martial ethics and, in fighting or dying well, they could inspire admiration and popular acclaim. They were celebrated in high and low art, and their value as entertainers was commemorated in precious and commonplace objects throughout the Roman world." --Wikipedia

Sound familiar? Last night, during the premiere of the "Real Housewives of DC," I realized why I watch the show. It's a question a lot of us have been asking ourselves for some time. It's certainly not out of envy, but that innate human desire to witness a stranges battle with a wild beast prepared to rip her to shreds. Pass the peanuts.

I don't imagine ancient Romans calling trips to the

Real Housewives: 10 million strong and growing (Getty Images)Is it possible to go a single day with out Real Housewife breaking news? Granted they're a growing minority -- turning the notion of reality star into something altogether undefined. They went from tacky, McMansion dwellers to pop stars, self-help gurus and national security threats.

Can we put them back inside the TV box please?

Enter the search terms "Real and "Housewives" in Google news and there's over 900 articles on a DC Housewife's feud with Whoopi Goldberg. Then there's Jersey news about foreclosures, courtroom drama, DUI's, Snooki appearances. And don't forget the NY stars who get a press mention for entering a Starbucks. And of course, there's always the requisite "let's stop caring about the Real Housewives" opinion piece--the most recent from the Washington Post.

I love any Housewife as much as the next person, but it does seem like the cast members are bleeding into actual news a little too often. From Salahi's party crashing, to Staub's courtroom drama, I'm starting to

Imagining the worst as a teenager. (thinkstock images)

Solar storms. UFO's and government cover-ups. Terrorism threats. Total internet shutdown. If these topics making headline news this week freak you out, imagine what they're doing to your teenager.

Alarmist news stories are designed, in part, to stop you from doing your work and get you clicking. As adults, we're able to balance the fantastical fear with the present reality. The world isn't exploding this second, the media is designed for deep impact, and if you don't finish this task right now you'll get fired and your personal world actually will explode. So we go on.

It's a skill we developed over time. (It may have taken me longer than most.) We've witnessed the build-up to Y2k, and the anti-climax. We've lived through the living nightmare that was September 11th. There have been black-outs, wars, and countless end of world predictions in the past twenty years alone. And while they're all life-altering you develop a thicker skin, and an ability to move forward with the mundane.

At the premiere of Ramona and Beezus, the Twitter generation is introduced to Cleary's work. (Vallery Jean/Getty)

After digging up five young adult books that changed my life, I got to wonder what some of my favorite authors are doing now and how they've adapted to the digital age. With Beverly Cleary's Ramona and Beezus in theaters now, there's still hope for Twitter generation to be exposed to the classics. But it sure does help when the authors have Twitter accounts. Some do, and adapting quite well to the 140 character format. It makes sense: they were good at first person, memorable sentences and biting humor. What's more interesting, though, is the personal information they're willing to share.

Author: Lois Duncan
Books: Killing Mr. Griffin, I Know What You Did Last Summer
Twitter: @duncanauthor
Bio: Author of 50 bks mostly for young people
Twitter Savvy: Excellent. She's incredibly funny and astute. She also updates pretty regularly.

Sample tweets:
Have been meticulously shaving my legs before going for my annual physical in order to weigh a little less when I get on the scale.

Googled

"Eat Pray Love", the memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, now a movie starring Julia Roberts, has gotten a lot of flack for being "Priv-Lit". The message of embracing life and love, through a year-long trip around the globe, is only really a plausible if you're rich and debt free. Never mind the non-stop turning down of various hot young men plot line--which only seems to happen if you're Julia Roberts.

Cost Plus World Market saw this dilemma and took action. If you can't afford a trip around the world, you can at least find your spiritual fulfillment with a block print pattern. Pier 1's West Coast soulmate (Seriously Pier, you would love this gal, you have so much in common) has now made eating, praying and loving easy for all women! Rangelife blog alerted us to the new Happy Meal style merchandising of the movie. There's all this awesome stuff like tea! and prayer beads! and yoga accessories! Really, it's not so different from figurines from the film "Cats and Dogs: The Revenge

More on the return of the Swatch here.

A scene from the movie adaption of the S.E. Hinton book
As adults we can read--or not read--whatever we want. It's a luxury we sometimes take for granted. Remember when August was when, back in grade school, when we'd be catching up on our required summer reading. The kinds of books we were assigned, and expected to savor, usually involved a boy, his wolf, and the Alaskan tundra. Or better yet, a boy, his dog and a rifle. The only cool character was bound to die and you had to get through 200 pages to even get there.

Then, some one (usually an older sibling) tips you off about S.E. Hinton. Her books, about young punks having sex, running away, getting punched and getting high, felt like contraband. Even the covers, with their watercolor representations of greaser punks, pulled out the puberty from your 10 year old self like taffy.

These weren't the kind of books you wrote an essay about, these were books that made you want to be a writer. Moments that seemed mundane to adults were genuine plot-lines; heartbreaking issues you might have