If you feel like the walking dead in the morning and yearn for something warm and flesh, er, fresh, to feel awake, we have got the perfect coffee mug for you.

Now you can drink your morning brew from a disturbingly realistic-looking zombie mug. 

Kevin “Turkey” Merck is the braaaaaaiiiins behind the mug. He is a pottery artist who has been throwing clay on wheels for the past 15 years. He likes creating a lot of horror and monster sculptures, but snail-paced, cranium-cravers are special.

“Zombies are by far my favorite monsters to work on, primarily because the of the forms,” Merck told The Huffington Post. “Textures and color choices for zombies are nearly endless.”

His coffee mug creations are impressively detailed and his pieces are inspired by work done by makeup artist Lon Chaney and the makeup development team on the movie “World War Z.”

“The 'clicking teeth' zombie that Brad Pitt encounters in the lab while testing his 'terminally ill camouflage' theory -- that dude freaked me out,” he said. “And I loved the subtle details of that makeup.” 

He’s also a huge fan of the show "The Walking Dead" and its special effects makeup artist, Kevin Wasner.

“His work is amazing! I had the opportunity to meet him last year,” he said. “Having lunch and chatting about his makeups and life in general, was definitely the highlight of my career. To top it all off he bought one of my zombie mugs for his collection!”

One of Merck’s pieces costs $220, but if that price makes you gasp, the passion that goes into Merck’s process may change your mind -- each mug is hand built from the ground up.

First, Merck turns the initial form on a wheel. Once it begins to stiffen and can hold some extra weight, he “bulks” it out with more clay. Once the primary form is complete, he uses his hands and sculpting tools to carve away any excess clay, adding details. 

After the sculpting is complete, he sprays on glaze, adds highlights and pops in kiln for 24 hours of firing and cooling. A second and sometimes third round of firing and cooling typically occurs.

All in all the non-toxic mugs, which are fully functional and dishwasher and microwave safe, take a long time to make.

“I've spent anywhere from four to 30 hours on a mug,” Merck said. “The entire process can take up to a month or more.” 

Though it’s seems like a pain, creating this creepy cups is a labor of love for Merck.

“When I learned how to work with clay I became obsessed with the possibilities and I haven't looked back since.”

Though the cups are currently sold out, Merck's website notes that the "Slow Joe" mug will see a limited release in February. 

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Imagine a film about one of our nation's great forefathers. He's a bootstrapping young man, born to white parents in the Caribbean, who came to New York to study. But, soon after his arrival, he leapt into the British colonies' nascent revolution. He advised Gen. George Washington, led a decisive battle in the Revolutionary War, passionately advocated for the Constitution's ratification, and served as the young United States' first Secretary of the Treasury. 

Now, what if the actor playing this storied figure in American history is of Puerto Rican descent? And what if the other major players in the story -- Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Eliza Schuyler -- were actors of color?

In an industry currently under fire for lack of representation in all areas -- behind the camera and in front of it -- it's very difficult to imagine Hollywood would do anything but cast along expected racial lines. And sure, there's not much wiggle room in a retelling of actual historical events, if history is indeed a selling point.

Yet the Broadway musical "Hamilton," which tells the real-life story of Alexander Hamilton and his fellow revolutionaries through a shockingly diverse cast, is a critical and commercial smash hit. Tickets are sold out until December 2016. When a lottery opened online for fans to win $10 reserved seats, the website crashed under the load of 50,000 people trying to enter. (The online lottery still hasn't reopened.) 

"Hamilton" is among the five top-grossing Broadway shows this season.

Hollywood studio executives -- the people who decide which films are made and which are not -- are said to shy away from diverse casting in the name of telling more "universal" stories that appeal to the broadest audience. Too many, for example, black actors, and you have "a black film" that won't appeal to anyone but black people. 

Yes, moviemaking is a risky business. Studios have bills to pay and stakeholders to please -- they need to crank out films that appeal to a lot of people just to make ends meet. Executives' presumption, though obviously flawed, is that whiteness is some kind of human default setting, and despite being a large part of the world off-screen, actors of color impede a film's attempt to speak to large numbers of ticket-buyers. For some reason, studios consider white actors not limiting whatsoever.

"Hamilton," though, spits in the face of that logic. The show's only white lead is England's King George III. Its titular character is played by Lin-Manuel Miranda, a Latino who wrote the script, flavoring the historical tale with hip-hop musical numbers. Other lead actors -- Leslie Odom Jr. plays Aaron Burr, Christopher Jackson plays Washington, Daveed Diggs plays Jefferson and Phillipa Soo plays Schuyler -- are all black or biracial.

At its heart, "Hamilton" is a white story told effectively and entertainingly by people of color. It's hugely appealing to Broadway audiences -- a group that, according to the Broadway League, is 80 percent white. It seems there's a lesson there for the entertainment industry at large: Actors of color aren't a liability.

Considering the inherent differences in their production, we have to admit that talking about Broadway success and Hollywood box office success may be an apples-to-oranges comparison. Take "The Wiz," a retelling of "The Wizard of Oz" featuring a black cast, for example. The stage production became a hit, winning seven Tony awards in 1975, yet the film adaption bombed at the box office. Hollywood and Broadway may simply be two different species of entertainment, each befitting certain types of stories better than the other.

But it's worth noting their similarities. Putting on a Broadway show is no walk in the park, either. Four out of five shows fail. We can imagine studio executives and Broadway investors sharing similar anxieties over their table at Per Se. 

Broadway, too, can't claim a great history of diversity. While The New York Times heralded this season’s offerings as the most diverse in recent memory -- pointing to “nontraditional” casting choices in a selection of plays and musicals -- a piece in the Guardian lamented the hard facts off-stage. The season included no new plays and very few musicals written by women or people of color. ("Hamilton," of course, provides uplifting news in both publications.) 

With stars threatening to boycott this year's Oscar ceremony in the name of racial disparity, it's unclear what it'll take before the tide turns, and the diverse reality of audiences' lives are actually represented in more of the stories we see on screen and other stages beyond "Hamilton's" Richard Rogers theater. 

We can only dare studio executives to not come out of a "Hamilton" performance with the sneaking suspicion that a diverse group of people can tell great stories, too.

You can be highbrow. You can be lowbrow. But can you ever just be brow? Welcome to Middlebrow, a weekly examination of pop culture. Sign up to receive it in your inbox weekly.

Follow Sara Boboltz on Twitter: @sara_bee

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If you're an Internet user (hi, everyone!), you've undoubtedly come across the dozens of Disney princess pastiche memes: They've been reimagined as classic paintings, transformed into pin-up girls and transposed into "Star Wars" scenes. 

We thought the royal bunch had done it all, and we were sure we'd seen enough, until an artist and an advocate took the gals on a trip to the gynecologist's office.

Danielle Sepulveres teamed up with friend and artist Maritza Lugo to illustrate what it would look like for Belle and crew to receive life-saving medical care.

Sepulveres told HuffPost she was fed up with how little media coverage cervical cancer and HPV were getting. The cause is important to her because she works with Cervivor, an organization dedicated to educating women (and men) about these conditions that affect thousands of women and their families every year. 

Something clicked, she said, as her Facebook timeline filled up with Disney princess adaptations -- and she couldn't keep herself from scrolling through them. 

"There's just something universal about them," she told HuffPost.

Soon after, she teamed up with Lugo to put the princesses in stirrups -- and not the kind attached to royal horses. 

Sepulveres said she hopes the entertaining artwork reminds women to make their annual gynecologist appointments -- and contributes to an open conversation about HPV and cervical cancer. 

"I think that one of the things that happens with HPV and cervical cancer is this stigma and shame or embarrassment that doesn't happen with other kinds of cancers," she said. "People don't talk about it, but it should be discussed because it's so prevalent." 

She's right. While most cases of HPV clear up on their own, the virus is also responsible for genital warts and some cancers, including cervical cancer. Often, the virus shows no signs or symptoms, so it is passed on unknowingly.

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease, and it can be spread by having vaginal, anal or oral sex with a person who has the virus. It's so prevalent, in fact, that almost every sexually active man and woman get the virus at some point, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

While a vaccine for HPV has been available since 2006, immunization rates are still low -- though growing. As of 2014, 60 percent of girls ages 13 -17 had at least one dose of the vaccine and nearly 40 percent had all three recommended doses, according to the CDC. Rates among boys and men are lower: As of 2014, 41 percent of boys received at least one dose of the vaccine and 21 percent had all three doses.  

But if the princesses can do it, so can the rest of us. 

Not all of Sepulveres' princess propaganda are focused on HPV. As you can see in the images, Jasmine talks with her doctor about responsible family planning and Cinderella is getting a standard STD examination. 

For more images of Disney princesses making wise choices about their reproductive health, head on over on Tumblr.

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When you fall in love with someone, everything about that person becomes endearing -- including their quirks and shortcomings.

Landysh, the Russia-based artist behind the online doodle site Lingvistov, explores this idea in her new illustrated book titled 21 Reasons Why I Love Her.

The artist told The Huffington Post that the book was inspired by a previous relationship.

"I am a tough person to be with, so all the things the lucky guy had to put up with are illustrated in that post!" she said. "I wanted to laugh at some cute and hilarious stuff that always comes up in a relationship."

"My colleague Asia and I spent an hour sitting in a cafe, remembering our past relationships and laughing our heads off," Landysh said. "As a result we made a list of reasons that I illustrated later in the form of a book."

21 Reasons Why I Love Her will be published later this month, but is currently available for pre-order on Lingvistov. Below, check out more of the artist's relatable drawings: 

Check out even more of Landysh's comical doodles on topics like the beauty of sleep and life as a cat owner.

H/T Design Taxi 

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"Not an invitation."

"Marriage is not consent." 

"I don't want my daughter to be the one in four." 

These are just a few of the powerful phrases featured in a recent photography project called "Still Not Asking For It." Created by Australian photographer Rory Banwell, the photo series aims to fight domestic violence and sexual assault by raising awareness about consent.

The series features people half-dressed or in their underwear with phrases of their choice like "Not an invitation" and "Your body your choice" written on their bodies or on signs they're holding.

Banwell told The Huffington Post that some participants are survivors of domestic violence or sexual abuse, others are relatives of survivors and some are simply just passionate advocates.

Banwell told HuffPost that the on-going project began in 2014 when she and her husband found out while she was 25 weeks pregnant that they were having a baby girl.

"As soon as my husband and I found out that we were having a girl, we both had a little freak out knowing that we would have to protect a teenage girl," Banwell said. "Most people I know (including myself) have suffered some form of sexual or domestic violence in their lifetime... and it absolutely terrified me thinking that my daughter could go through the same thing."

Banwell received some criticism about the lack of diversity in the series when she posted the photos to her Facebook page in November. She told HuffPost that it's her goal to represent a broad range of races and genders since the project is far from finished. "I would love to have more people of color, men and anyone else who would like to be a part of the project," she said.

Scroll below to see more of Banwell's "Still Not Asking For It" series. 

Head over to Tumblr to read more about Banwell's project.  

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Once upon a time, a popular fairy tale was plucked from a school library in Qatar after an outraged parent complained that it was full of sexual innuendos.

The offending storybook was based on the classic Disney film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," in which a young woman eats a poisonous apple and is later revived by a handsome prince's kiss.

After a parent at SEK International School Qatar voiced concern that the book's illustrations and text were culturally inappropriate, Qatar's Supreme Education Council, or SEC, ordered its removal, Doha News reported on Thursday.

The school's principal, Vivian Arif, quickly moved to ensure no child would ever read it there again. “SEK International School Qatar is proud to be established in this country and presents its formal apologies for any offense that this unintended situation may have caused," she said in a statement to Doha News.

As The Guardian points out, censorship of sexual or obscene content is not unusual in Qatar, which recently banned all showings of "The Danish Girl," a British film that features a transgender protagonist, for supposedly depraved content.

Schools in Qatar must adhere to the rules set out by the SEC, which posted excerpts of SEK International School Qatar's apology on its Arabic Twitter account. According to its own website, the SEC aims to observe "international best practices, while preserving and taking into account the Islamic values and local traditions."

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The giant snow penis cannot be stopped. 

Emilian Sava, one of the workers who had to clear a giant snow penis from a park in Sweden, felt so guilty about the act of phallic vandalism that he erected his own giant snow schlong, according to The Local. 

And in what may be the world's greatest display of penis envy, the new snow penis is much more massive than the old one.

The original penis was carved into the snow over a frozen moat in Kungsparken (King's Park) in the city of Gothenburg. It quickly aroused complaints from members of the community. 

Since the ice on the moat was unstable, they needed a giant tool to erase the penis: 

Now there's a new penis in Gothenburg -- created with a snowblower by Sava -- and this one is so big that it's hard to complain about. 

"No one can get offended by the penis. It can’t be seen from the ground," Sava told regional newspaper GT, according to The Local.

The new penis is indeed best appreciated from above:

The removal of the original penis led to the creation of a "restore the snow penis" Facebook group, which quickly achieved more than 3,300 likes.

"It is absolutely a frivolous thing, but also a form of popular creativity," Andreas Holmgren, the creator of the Facebook group, told Göteborgs-Posten, according to a translation from Citylab. "When an established artist paints a penis in oil paint, he can hang in a frame in a gallery. But if an ordinary citizen draws a penis in the snow, it’s the obscene and must be removed. I mean it’s just about who the creator is."

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By the time he was 36 years old, neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi had also earned a master's degree in English literature and won neuroscience's highest research award. He was married to a successful internist and was considered a top prospect for a prestigious neuroscience professorship at Stanford University. 

Then he found out he had stage IV lung cancer.

"The diagnosis was immediate," he wrote in his new memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, which was published posthumously this month (Kalanithi died in March 2015). "In my neurosurgical training, I had reviewed hundreds of scans for fellow doctors to see if surgery offered any hope. I’d scribble in the chart 'Widely metastatic disease -- no role for surgery,' and move on."

The new book tracks Kalanithi's thoughts during his last year and a half of life, including his quest to answer one of the existential questions that prompted him to devote his life to medicine in first place: "What makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay?"

Here are four thoughtful insights from Kalanithi's memoir: 

1. It's up to you to find your values.

When Kalanithi first learns he has terminal lung cancer, he presses his oncologist, Emma, to be specific about his prognosis.

"If I had a sense of how much time I have left, it'd be easier," he responds when Emma refuses to put a number on his life expectancy. "If I had two years, I'd write. If I had 10, I'd get back to surgery and science."

Instead of giving in to his request, Emma tells Kalanithi to "find his values." It's a mandate he finds challenging, because, as he writes, "the tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out."

Kalanithi returns to neuroscience for a short stretch, but eventually transitions into the role of family man, husband, and, of course, writer. While the prospect of death speeds up Kalanithi's life shift, the notion of reinventing his values as he transitions through different life stages is a valuable one.

"Emma hadn't given me back my old identity," Kalanithi writes. "She'd protected my ability to forge a new one." 

2. Each of us can only see part of the picture.

When Kalanithi returns to his own hospital as a patient in a hospital gown, instead of as a surgeon, he sees for the first time how different cancer is on the other side of the white coat.

"Human knowledge is never contained in one person," he realizes, noting that a doctor, patient, engineer, economist, pearl diver, alcoholic, cable guy, sheep farmer, beggar and pastor all see the world differently. "It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete."

Regardless of Kalanithi's neuroscience awards or talent with a scalpel, it takes becoming a cancer patient himself before he can truly empathize with his patients' and their families' suffering.

3. Nobody 'has it coming.'

As Kalanithi settles into life as a resident, he begins to worry that although he's gaining competence as a physician, he's becoming desensitized to trauma and human suffering, and making "more moral slides than strides," as he puts it.

These aren't baseless anxieties. Kalanithi recounts being too busy to answer cancer patients' questions thoroughly, and an incident with a defiant veteran who re-injured himself within weeks of ignoring his doctors' advice. "I stitched the dehiscent wound as he yelped in pain, telling myself he'd had it coming," Kalanithi writes. 

It takes a fellow medical school student's death in a car crash for Kalanithi to course-correct. "Nobody has it coming," he realizes. "As a resident, my highest ideal was not saving lives -- everyone dies eventually -- but guiding a patient or family to an understanding of death or illness." 

In practice, Kalanithi transforms his informed consent process from an obligation into an "opportunity to forge a covenant with a suffering compatriot." It's also a good reminder to all of us about the power of human connection.

4. Life isn't about avoiding suffering.

When Kalanithi and his wife, Lucy, discuss whether or not to have a baby together during Kalanithi's final months, Kalanithi has the perfect response to Lucy's question about whether saying goodbye to a child would ultimately make his death more painful.

"Wouldn't it be great if it did?" he replies, observing that both he and Lucy felt that life wasn't about avoiding suffering. Indeed, Kalanithi's relationship to his daughter, Cady, is the underpinning of his memoir and a shining light in his last moments:

"You filled a dying man's days with a sated joy," he writes. "A joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing." 

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The movies most commonly associated with the Sundance Film Festival are indie darlings -- daring dramas like "Sex, Lies and Videotape," moody meditations like "Garden State" and surprising comedy gems like "Little Miss Sunshine." But Sundance is always a hub for the year's hottest documentaries. "Hoop Dreams," "Super Size Me" and "Man on Wire" all premiered there, after all. In fact, two of 2016's Oscar-nominated documentaries -- "Cartel Land" and "What Happened, Miss Simone?" -- were highlights at last year's festival, while "Going Clear," "Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck," "Best of Enemies" and "The Hunting Ground" also bowed this time last January.  

As Sundance kicks off on Thursday, pay attention to the buzz surrounding the lineup's docs. They promise juicy insights into subjects like cults, Michael Jackson, gun laws, North Korean dictators, Maya Angelou, tickling and the Internet. Honestly, we're probably more jazzed about the documentaries on this year's lineup than anything else. The Huffington Post premiered a clip from the abortion doc "Trapped" on Wednesday, and now we've handpicked 19 others that will entice the throngs of festivalgoers in Park City, Utah, over the next 11 days.

The Sundance Film Festival is Jan. 21-31. See the full lineup here.

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An Ohio mom is giving social media users a glimpse into what the body really looks like after giving birth.

Just 24 hours after delivering her fifth child, Erica Andrews posted a raw selfie that shows the adult diaper-clad, breastfeeding mom in all her post-birth glory. 

"This is what 24 hours postpartum looks like," Andrews wrote in the caption for the black and white photo. "Baby in sling. Skin to skin. Adult diapers. And a rosy glow."

"My body feels like it ran a marathon and my heart is wide open from yesterday's travels," she continued. "Birth opens us like an earthquake opens the earth and I am still in the intimate, fragile throes of that opening. I feel raw. Emotional. Different. I feel like I'm on the undulating surface of the rippling ocean being tossed back and forth between happiness, gratitude, melancholy, and grief."

Andrews lyrically describes the many emotions she experienced after giving birth to her baby boy Silas. She compares the heartbreaking "emptiness" in her womb and the beautiful reminders that she now holds life in her hands.

Reveling in the strength of mothers, she adds, "This time is simply unlike any other."

The mom initially shared her selfie on Instagram, but it reached viral heights after the baby sling company Sakura Bloom posted the photo and caption on Facebook. That post has received over 122,000 likes, and the comments section is filled with words of support, thanking Andrews for her poetic description of "the fourth trimester."

Andrews told The Huffington Post that she felt particularly emotional with this pregnancy and birth because Silas is her fifth and last baby.

"This is my last time to experience all of these radical changes and big emotions," she said. "As I gazed in the mirror that next day I wanted to capture what I had somewhat glazed over with my other four, what our bodies look like so soon after birth. Where we go from being so round and full of life to having a soft belly and life in our arms. The words are my way of navigating this fragile time."

Though the mom was not expecting the viral response to her photo, she says the comments from fellow parents, particularly those with grown children, have brought her to "happy tears."

"It's pretty intense at this still fragile time (I'm now 13 days postpartum) to know that so many people have seen me in an adult diaper, nursing my fresh newborn in a sling," Andrews told HuffPost. "But to know that my words were heard and understood by so many incredible women has made it all that more special."

Ultimately, the mom is happy to know that her words may help others in the throes of postpartum emotions and physical changes.

Said Andrews, "My biggest hope is that other mothers find beauty in their form, in their amazing body, in their baby, and that they know they are not alone in the BIG feelings that are washing over them."

Best wishes to all moms out there, grappling with a new reality after giving birth.

H/T Cosmopolitan

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Warning: So many lewd nudes ahead. Proceed with caution.

Maite Zubiaurre is a professor in Spanish modern and contemporary studies at UCLA, focusing on the years between 1898 and 1939, often referred to as the "Generation of '98."

For those who need a refresher on Spanish history, this was the time period following the fall of Spain's imperialist glory, known for its subdued melancholy. Zubiaurre couldn't help but wonder, however, just how subdued early 20th century Spain really was. 

"After all, these were the roaring twenties all over Europe and the United States, and beyond," Zubiaurre wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. "What happened to all the vibrant social and cultural innovations that were taking the Western world by assault, particularly in the realm of sexuality and Eros? What about the rich printed and visual culture around homosexuality, androgyny and gay rights? What about the vigorous feminist and suffragists movements?" 

Zubiaurre found her answer unexpectedly one day when, roaming an antique store in Madrid, she stumbled upon a photo album full of erotic imagery, from magazine clippings to postcards to early attempts at pornographic film. Many of these early 20th century Spanish erotica -- also known as sicalipsis -- depicted clearly forbidden sexual acts in the eyes of the Catholic church, including ménage à trois, fellatio, cunnilingus and zoophilia.

More than the subversive imagery on display, though, these images patched together a lost history of sexuality and desire, silenced under the rule of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco from 1939 to 1975, during which many graphic or dissenting images were censored or destroyed.

For 10 years, Zubiaurre treasure hunted and researched similar erotic materials, eventually building a visual history of early 20th century sexuality in Spain. The X-rated treasure trove illuminates the public emergence of feminism, gay love, cross dressing, psychoanalysis, masturbation, sex manuals and hardcore porn.

The collection also features several cameos by bicycles and typewriters -- newfangled technologies that symbolized freedom, danger, and for many young women, liberation. "Erotica eagerly imports bicycles and typewriters," Zubiaurre explained, "since these are the accompanying elements to the 'modern woman.' Flappers speed away on their bicycles, and busily type in offices: for the first time, women from the middle class find their way into offices and paid employment."

Unfortunately, many of the erotic images, captured from and for the male gaze, repurposed these symbols of freedom to condescend the view of the modern woman. In her words: "Nobody cared about satisfying the sexual needs of women."

"Erotica (in Spain and elsewhere) feels compelled to react immediately," Zubiaurre noted. "As a way of counteracting the powerful impulse of women's liberation, erotica takes possession of typewriters and bicycles and reproduces them (textually and visually) ad nauseam, with one main goal in mind: to ridicule the 'modern' females who dare to make use of these artifacts and to contravene the moral and social standards of the times."

"Bicycles and typewriters are dangerous, because they offer women freedom, mobility and access to the public sphere," she added. "Sure enough, anxiety-ridden misogyny is quick to counterattack, and resorts to the usual tactics, namely, to try to disempower women by turning them into sex objects, and cyclists and typists into whores."

Still, many of the images had the opposite effect. The eroticized cyclists and typists served as inspiring models for the young women of the day, particularly those intrigued by paradigms of femininity outside the home. And there are some materials that, even if accidentally, helped women tap into their sexual sides, for example didactic sex manuals outlying different positions. There are also a couple of nudist magazines featuring men in the buff, a stark difference from the normal monotony of female bodies.

All in all, like today's hyper-visual culture, the images of the 20th century played a powerful and complex role in the formation of identity. While some narrative histories focus on the solemnity of Generation of '98, a few naughty photos of yore tell a slightly different story.

Zubiaurre compiled her erotic findings into a book titled Cultures of the Erotic in Spain, 1898-1939, which is available for purchase on Amazon. (There is also a Spanish version titled Culturas del Erotismo en España 1899-1939.) Visit her virtual cabinet of curiosities to learn more.

h/t Creators Project

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The magic of a great first kiss might be incomparable. Time, prone to stubbornly trudging forward, manages to slow down. All the newness, fluttery feelings and fulfilled expectations crash together in a perfectly romantic moment.

At least that’s how we talk about first kisses. In movies and other love stories it’s a super-idealized act, and we often expect our real lives to live up to all the pomp.

Photographer Marta Soul brings the whimsy and romance we attach to budding love in her series “Idilios,” for which she photographed herself experiencing a first kiss with several men in beautiful settings.

In her images, a redheaded woman -- Soul’s alter-ego -- embraces faceless men near a fire, on a park bench, in a posh apartment, and inside a museum. Each pose is carefully staged, like a still from a gorgeously-shot movie.

Soul got the idea for the project after ending a 15-year relationship and realizing that what she really pined for was newness, and the excitement that comes with the carefree early stages of a partnership.

“Immediate satisfaction is found in the kiss,” Soul writes on her site. “It is the beginning and end of the entire narrative scene and it is the iconographic element of the image too.”

She attributes this want to an ingrained “consumerist lifestyle,” writing in an email to The Huffington Post, “I really was after falling in love many more times. I wanted to stop the time in that precise moment, the first kiss. [...] It also had to be perfect, to satisfy all the stereotypes, in the sense of being able to stay there with the ideal man and to live that moment in an ideal context, preferably in elegant and ostentatious spaces.”

Soul named her series “Idilios” after an uncommon Spanish word used to describe the moment two people fall in love. It’s a markedly different word than “romance,” which encompasses the crests and troughs of a dramatic, longterm affair.

Of the lovely word, Soul says, “I haven’t found an equivalent term in English.”

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For most, wolves are best experienced from a safe distance. A belly-full howl from a faraway, shadowy creature provides ample wolf exposure for the majority. But not all. 

Cleo Goossens is a photographer based in Eindhoven in the Netherlands -- and, so we've gathered, a significant wolf enthusiast. (Her dog is named Wolf and her company, Sun of Wolves.) Recently, Goossens visited eight real, very live wolves in Germany, owned by a Dutch man who lives with them in harmony, along with his wife, son and dingo.

The photographs, some in black and white, others in color, some from far away, some startlingly close, capture wolves with an intimacy not often found in nature or wildlife photography. One image presents its subject as the lone wolf in the wild while another depicts a cuddly creature hungry for contact and love. The short but striking series shows the dynamic range of personas that wolves embody, and their surprising capacity to interact with humans. 

Get up close and personal with a pack of wolves through the images below. 

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In Dale Carnegie's self-help classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People, he reminded the world that "a person's name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language." 

Combine that magical noise with the soothing activity of coloring, and you have the recipe for a personalized coloring book. And just like coloring books, personalized volumes aren't only for kids anymore. 

As Buzzfeed noted this week, publisher Put Me in the Story offers adult coloring books personalized with your own name to enhance the coloring experience. The publisher's own site notes that their mission is to spark a greater attachment between kids and books, because "great personalization can create a profound connection between kids and books." Get your toddler a picture book in which he or she is the protagonist, and reading it becomes doubly exciting. 

Well, newsflash: All humans remain enraptured with themselves, and as Carnegie knew, we love seeing and hearing our own names. Why should kids have all the fun, anyway? Why shouldn't you color in a book with your name on the cover, while curled up in your racecar bed, after a hearty dinner of mac n' cheese with hot dugs cut up in it?

Hey, I think I just described my perfect evening.

So if you're in the mood to feel important and pampered, and scrawling your name in crayon on the walls isn't cutting it, maybe a personalized coloring book is what you're looking for. Here's a peek inside a couple of Put Me in the Story's relaxing adult coloring books:

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This Florida couple's pregnancy announcement comes with a side of funk.

Excited announcers: Steffaney and Austin Bass

Due date: August 2016

Announcement method of choice: The duo made a baby-fied parody of Mark Ronson's "Uptown Funk."

Standout lyrics: "We're pregnant, hallelujah!"

Happy ending: This news comes after the couple struggled to conceive. Austin has also dealt with medical issues -- the dad-to-be has a condition called Arnold Chairi malformation, which has necessitated 19 brain surgeries over the past 10 years. 

H/T Today

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In the early 1960s, Gordon Parks was working as an editorial magazine photographer for Life magazine. By this point, the influential artist from Kansas had already captured his iconic "American Gothic" portrait -- a recreation of the well-known Grant Wood painting -- which he produced during his tenure with the Farm Security Administration. He'd published his powerful "Harlem Gang Leader" photo essay for Life and snapped images of beloved figures like Eartha Kitt, Sidney Poitier and Duke Ellington. He was on his way to working with the likes of Muhammed Ali, even directing that unforgettable film "Shaft."

Peter Beard, a native New Yorker younger than Parks, was an art student at Yale in 1960, learning from Josef Albers and dabbling in projects for Diana Vreeland at Vogue. He'd made trips to the African continent already, but was a few years away from documenting the tragic demise of 35,000 elephants and other animals in Kenya, the subjects of his first book, The End of the Game. He'd yet to show his diary-like collages -- a combination of photography and marginalia -- in his first exhibition at Blum Helman Gallery in New York.

At the turn of the decade, the two met through their mutual agent, Peter Schub, and soon collaborated on a fashion shoot dubbed "Peter Pan in Central Park." Parks was then a burgeoning photo pioneer, and Beard just kickstarting his place in the field, but their friendship blossomed atop their shared belief that photography could function as an amplifier of social and environmental injustices. 

"Gordon was unstoppable," Beard recalled in a statement to the The Gordon Parks Foundation. "And he was an amazing diplomat. At one of the most difficult times in African-American history, he was a soldier ... a veritable 'Jackie Robinson' of the media world. Three words sum it all up for him: authenticity, atmosphere, and feeling."

The Gordon Parks Foundation is currently paying tribute to these two photographers in a unique exhibition titled "Gordon Parks: Collages by Peter Beard." The show features works made by Beard in 2013, which place Park's recognizable images alongside found objects and journal-esque text from Beard, all arranged in a mass of bricolage. The pieces honor a camaraderie based on art's powerful position at the heart of culture, as a force of change in America and beyond. Both believed heartily in the idea, professed by Parks, that "the subject matter is so much more important than the photographer."

"Gordon Parks and Peter Beard shared an abiding interest to bring public attention to injustice and to inspire passion for social change through their pictures," Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., executive director of the Gordon Parks Foundation, explained to The Huffington Post. "These collages made by Peter Beard incorporate many of Gordon’s iconic pictures that spanned decades and allow for visitors to see into Beards’ creative process of some of the country’s most power images."

The foundation's exhibition also includes photographs by Orin Langelle documenting the installation and reception of Beard’s The End of the Game at New York’s International Center of Photography. Parks’ had showed there just two years earlier, exhibiting "Moments Without Proper Names." Beard and Parks, as the foundation notes, were some of the first photographers to host solo shows at ICP, at a time when photography was gaining ground as a segment of the fine and contemporary art world.

As a reflection on friendship, the collages on view are a heartfelt homage to the ways artists found common ground in creativity. As a survey of Park's groundbreaking work, and Beard's lasting style, the images are a stunning tribute to one of the Civil Rights era's brightest advocates.

"Gordon Parks: Collages by Peter Beard" will be on view through April 23, 2016, in the exhibition space of The Gordon Parks Foundation, located at 48 Wheeler Avenue in Pleasantville, New York. Learn more about Taschen’s 50th Anniversary Edition of Beard’s photo-book, The End of the Game.

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Twenty-five years after "Paris Is Burning" stormed through the Sundance Film Festival, another documentary centered on the queer community's ball culture is set to premiere there this week. Directed by Sara Jordenö, "Kiki" explores the contemporary underground dance scene, particularly LGBTQ youth in New York City who have vogued their way into resilient communities that challenge gender and class standards. 

The Huffington Post has an exclusive clip from "Kiki," which finds one of its subjects voguing on a subway platform before the scene segues to a lively ball rehearsal. The movie premieres Tuesday at Sundance, where it is seeking theatrical distribution, and beneath the clip you'll see two posters for the film. 

The Sundance Film Festival is Jan. 21-31. See the full lineup here.

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Warning: This post contains lots of nudity and may be unsuitable for work. 

In one of photographer John Kayser's untitled Polaroids, Kayser himself lies horizontally on the ground, his button-up shirt adorned with little blue cars. A pair of woman's legs loom over his upper half -- hairless, glowing, tucked into black stiletto pumps, one of which is pressing directly into his cheek. 

It's the grown-up version of the middle school perv, lying down between the bleachers in the hopes of catching a glimpse up an unsuspecting cheerleader's skirt. There's a touch of '70s performance artist Vito Acconci -- famous for masturbating beneath the floorboards of a gallery, his panting breath wafting upwards -- mixed in, too.

Between 1960 and 1980, the mysterious man often referred to as John K. photographed hundreds of women --  passionately, dramatically, sometimes creepily. He photographed them posing nude, legs splayed open, amidst a cornucopia of harvest vegetables. He photographed them faceless, horizontal, on a bed, their pubic hair silver in the light. He photographed them fully clothed, too.

Not much is known about Kayser. He was born in North Dakota in 1922 and moved to Los Angeles as a child, where he spent the rest of his life. He served briefly in World War II as an armorer in the 18th Bomber Squad, and later worked for Northrup Aircraft Inc. in L.A., first in assembly and then as a technical illustrator. He studied briefly at the Art Center of Los Angeles and the Allied Art School in Glendale, California. He may have been married to a woman named Lilly

And, of course, he took pictures and made 8 mm films. He worked in a studio he created in his home, where he draped red velvet and other fabrics as a somewhat haphazard backdrop. In a stranger component of his collection of rarely seen images, naked women sit, back to the viewer, on a variety of random objects -- pies, cakes, bread, fish bowls, cats and Grecian vases -- their cheeks smushed against the systematically arbitrary goods.  

Kayser's photographs, discovered by several galleries after his death, epitomize the male gaze -- or, more specifically, the dirty old male gaze. Somewhere between outsider artist, amateur pornographer and Peeping Tom, Kayser exposes his own uncontrollable appetite with every exposed butt cheek before his lens. What are we to make of this camera-laden Humbert Humbert, who leaves behind so little clues aside from his glaring love of the female form?

Eric Kroll, a fetish photographer and collector of Kayser's work, has a theory: "I think these photos had a dual purpose for him: to paint from and to get off on, sexually. The work runs the gamut from classical nude to extremely intimate. But if the definition for pornography is gratuitous imagery to sell, then John wasn’t a pornographer. I can’t claim he didn’t feel there would be a certain immorality to his work (since he, as an old man, scribbled names and dates on the backs of his images taken years earlier), but I suspect the women never imagined their most private parts would grace a gallery wall." 

For Max Farago, owner of Farago Gallery, the allure was in the quality of the images more than the content. "My first reaction was to the image, the composition, the color, the rhythm of the photographs," he explained. "And secondly was the eroticism, even though it's so present in the work. He took so much time to express his desires, directing the girls and creating the sets. It feels very all encompassing in a way you don't see of most guys at home living out their fantasies."

Farago compares Kayser's oeuvre to the work of outsider artist Miroslav Tichý, who constructed cameras out of cardboard tubes and tin cans to photograph unsuspecting women on the street. He also mentions formal similarities between Carlo Mollino, Christopher Williams and Paul Outerbridge.

Aside from the extravagant sets, and the slight shortcomings in execution that reveal Kayser as the amateur he was, Farago was intrigued by a certain repeated motif throughout the works -- no, not just naked butts. Farago noticed the recurrent theme of pressure, contact, touch. "There is always a woman sitting on something, or there's someone standing on his face, or cars driving over objects, himself under a car. There is always contact."

This predilection for touching and being touched is easily overshadowed by the preponderance of boobs and butts in Kayser's images. But it's this detail that perhaps best illuminates the motivation behind the works, a certain desire to be touched, held, even crushed.

By working his own image into the frame, often as a lifeless form to be stomped on or smushed, Kayser envisions his own weakness and actualizes his own humiliation. The images capture the full scope of lust, from fantasy to the desolate reality that often creeps back in.  

Kayser is far from the first artist to devote his work to feminine beauty. He's also, probably, not alone in his amateur approach to fiendish documentation. Yet what sets him apart from the average voyeur is his willingness to turn the camera on himself, to let the red velvet curtain hang lopsided to the right, to expose the cracks and wrinkles in his fantasy and the humiliation he experiences, and perhaps desires, as a man. 

"John K: Women" runs from January 29 until March 5, 2016, at Farago Gallery in L.A. 

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This incredible haka dance might've left the bride in tears, but it's so powerful, we're certain you'll feel emotional too. 

A viral video shared on Vimeo shows a haka dance, a traditional war dance from the New Zealand indigenous people, the Māori, being performed at Benjamin and Aaliyah Armstrong's wedding last weekend. The performance, which was done as a surprise by the groomsmen as well as guests, made Aaliyah emotional and eventually moved the entire room. 

Watch as the group chants and moves together with so much unity, it'll send chills down your spine. The dance, which was organized by the best man and led by Benjamin's older brother, starts off with the group of men, but more and more people start joining in -- even the bridesmaids and bride. 

"I wasn't planning on jumping in until one bridesmaid did," Aaliyah told BBC News. "I felt the need to show love and respect back. I was really blown away."

Though the haka is a war dance, it was also traditionally performed when groups came together in peace as well. Today, the dance is still done at Māori ceremonies and celebrations as a way to honor special occasions. It's also occasionally performed at sporting events to challenge opponents. 

According to BBC News, this particular haka was done as a sign of respect from Benjamin's family members and best man. 

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Just when you thought Adele's "All I Ask" couldn't be more beautiful, it transcends beauty when accompanied by a stunning ballet. 

Dancers DJ Smart and Zola Williams appear in a routine choreographed by Will B. Bell from Van Nuys, California, to the music of Adele off her latest album, "25." The video was shared on Vimeo earlier this month, and has over 350,000 views. 

The movements and the vocals are nothing short of breathtaking. 

Correction: An earlier edition of this article mistakenly referenced Adele's most recent album as "27." We regret the error. 

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