All-American Girl publicized itself as based on Margaret Cho’s stand-up comedy, but that was mostly just a gloss. Cho was the youngest representative of a wave of female comediennes turned network stars in that era, including Brett Butler, Ellen DeGeneres, and Roseanne Barr. But unlike that trio, she was the only woman of color, and the only one who had no creative control. She didn’t write, produce, or direct any of the episodes, and the network infrastructure was built against her: None of the show’s 11 writers were Korean-American (two were Chinese-American), nor were any of the directors or producers. But Cho became the fall girl, the one who would be punished if and when the show failed.
As someone who Loves Space, this was really sad and moving and cool. Don’t worry, once we find out that the moon is actually an egg, we’re gonna quickly fix all the systemic problems on Earth and then take TO THE SKIES.
To this day, my brother only has a G1, bc that’s all he needed to have ID to buy beer with.
My 100% surefire method for how to conduct yourself if you are married to me is over at Jezebel.
i am not linking to piers morgan but you can share your favourite tweets and burns here
It is Remembrance Day in Canada and the UK and the rest of the Commonwealth, or Veterans Day if you are in the US. Since Remembrance Day is explicitly meant to honour those who have died in wartime, and Veterans Day is for recognizing everyone who has served in the military, it can be a bit jarring for Canadians living in the US to see holiday-pegged SALES and stuff on November 11th, because it is actually a really somber, big-deal day for us, generally-speaking.
This civil forfeiture stuff is bullshit.
On the rise of 24hr daycare:
WELL-PAID PROFESSIONALS WHO work evenings may be able to afford one or two nannies, or they may have partners who stay at home. But parents like the ones who rely on Dee’s can’t afford such luxuries. Diana and Ivette’s mother, Marisol, for instance, is raising the girls on her own, working at a supermarket from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. and at Home Depot from 6 to 10 p.m., six days a week. The girls are at the Hogans’ for both of her shifts, and she’s with them between 2:30 and 5:30 p.m. each day. “I worked one job 29 hours a week, so I got a second job, as I can’t afford to take care of my kids—I need more money to be surviving,” says Marisol, a slim young woman with glasses and pulled-back hair who came to the U.S. from Mexico when she was four. Marisol works 29 hours at each of her jobs. This is common. If an employee works more hours, her employer is required to provide health insurance. “With car payments coming up, I applied for Home Depot,” she says. “The Hogans are very open about my schedule and were willing to work with me.”
I am OBSESSSED with this fake marathoner dude, and the weird, pointless difficulty of what he was doing.
I think that’s my favorite Peter Capaldi line reading so far: “The moon … is an egg!!!!”
I am pretty sure the only possible response to any of that is some sort of Bataille-an bacchanal that results in most people’s gory deaths and maybe some necrophilia. So, not sure if that’s what Nicole means by “fixing all our systemic problems.”
Seriously, Eddie Bauer? Wow, how SPECTACULARLY tacky and gross! (And hey, CTV, it’s “cried foul” not “cried fowl.”) It’s not a day for sales! Stop being gross!
My idiot boss yesterday was arguing AGAINST a stat holiday in Ontario for RD just because, he says, “it’ll just become another holiday and people will start buying gifts and it’ll become commercialized.” Seeing as how this has not yet happened in THE REST OF CANADA, I’m going to chalk it up to my boss being an immense dingbat.
Is this the same boss with the kid with racist Halloween costumes?
Sounds like a lovely guy.
It sure is! He’s a fucking douche.
I moved to Ontario 5 years ago, and I’m really bothered by how small a deal it is here. Almost no one I know goes to Remembrance Day services here, because they have other stuff to do, because it’s not a stat holiday 🙁
It’s true. When I lived in NB it was a Big Deal, and here it’s….not a big deal at all. And I really dislike that. It was somewhat different when I lived in Ottawa because it was more of a Deal there, and it is where I live now because I live next to a big damn base, but it’s just…..semidepressing to me that nobody goes to services unless they’re already not working for various other reasons.
I’m really happy that it’s becoming a proper stat holiday.
Only downside is that I feel that schools do a really good job on remembrace day assemblies and such … but I supposed they could just move it to the 10th.
My school did a TERRIBLE job with remembrance day assemblies. But my school did a terrible job with everything, so they might be an outlier.
Yeah, that’s what schools elsewhere in the country do. I remember the assemblies being extremely poignant, even on Nov. 10th.
When I lived in Ontario, someone told me the Legion there had argued against it being a holiday because it would lead to inappropriately timed sales on beer. I have no idea if that’s true, though. I was in university, so I was around a lot of young mansplainers.
Now that I live in Alberta, my office gives us Boxing Day and Heritage Day off instead of Family Day and Remembrance Day. I often use a vacation day to take Remembrance Day off, but I forgot this year, so here I am at the office.
It’s a stat holiday in NL and I am heartened by the crowds that come out to the ceremony in my town. I haven’t heard anyone grumbling about not being able to sell or shop (I work in a local retail business).
Lots of LOW LOW PRICES on Memorial Day too which is supposed to be the somber, remembering-the-fallen holiday….. :-/
“They have fallen… and so have our prices!”
I kind of hate you, kind of love you for making me laugh out loud with that.
Yesterday at work I had two coffees + two excedrin after an accidentally no-caffeine weekend and was so wired that I signed up for six online courses, one of which is about space. This isn’t totally relevant, but I feel like I’ll have something much more profound to say re: the space article if you ask me in a few months.
This is the dictionary definition of living your best life.
Um may be totally weird – but I seem to remember that you live in DC? If you are interested, every year an American organization called Explore Mars has a three day conference at GWU, “The Humans to Mars Summit.” If, unlike the position in the article, you want to keep believing that humans on Mars will happen.
I do live in DC! Thanks for letting me know, I’ll look into it!
oh my god just reading this gave me heart palpitations
I just got my full G this year after 10 years of switching between a G1 and a G2.
The first five year expiration date came while I was dealing with a really bad bout of depression. Apparently, road tests are not a good idea to take to “see if things feel better”
Second expiration date, I squeaked in on a last minute test booking, showed up in a car whose horn wouldn’t work. Had to wait all day to find another car and get a last minute standby test.
So relieved it’s all over
“My favorite moment in Asian-American television lasts about two minutes. It is the crazed, brilliant introduction of Señor Chang, played by Ken Jeong, as Greendale’s Spanish teacher on Community. “Every once in a while a student will come up to me and ask, Señor Chang, why do you teach Spanish?” he chuckles softly. “They say it just like that. Why do you teach Spanish? Why. You.” In an uninterrupted monologue, Jeong cavorts and cackles on the knife’s edge of sanity, anticipating racist questions (“Don’t tell me that I’m mysterious and inscrutable!”), spouting delusions of grandeur (“In Spanish my name is El Tigre Chino!”) and invading everyone’s personal space, as though the only reasonable response to racism is to lose your mind. It was raw, confrontational, and reminded me of Margaret Cho. It was something I could identify with.”
Yeeeeeesssssss
Oh man, I never saw the scene that way, as almost wholly a reaction to racism. Damn.
I miss when Community used to be great
Changlorious Basterds. It was like Inglorious Basterds, but with Chang instead of In.
I don’t get it either.
I would legit be interested in reading some thinkpieces written by PoC about Community (and its mercurial creator Dan Harmon). I love that show, not least of all because of the diverse cast, but I have often wondered if my white privilege was blinding me from some racially questionable stuff in it? Like, I dunno, maybe it’s targeted just a bit too precisely at those Well-Meaning White Liberal post-racial fantasies I still find myself clinging to from time to time. Like, “Yay, racism is over, there’s a well-loved show with interracial friendships on TV! They love each other, everything’s fine!”
I’d be interested in reading those too. While I think Chang’s first monologue is so spot on, I do think they wasted an opportunity by just making his character as weird as he could possibly be as the show continued.
She had tussled with the network executives about what to name the show. Originally she wanted it to be called, The Margaret Cho Show, because, she said, “I am such a fucking egomaniac.” Instead, they threw out suggestions like, “East Meets West” and “Wok on the Wild Side. W-O-K.” She had a tantrum and told them, “‘Fuck you. We’re gonna call it ‘Chinkies!’ I mean, it’s ‘Gook’s Place’ or we’re not doing it!” Imagine if she had gotten her way from the beginning.
I LOVE MARGARET CHO
Everything else may be terrible, but there is a small ray of light and it is the Broad City Season 2 trailer
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/to417u/broad-city-g…
ABBI YELLING AT A KITTEN. ILANA AND HER MOM. WHY ISN’T IT JANUARY YET.
Oh man I AM SO EXCITED. Both of them doing action-movie tumbles over a cab!
*punts whole fried chicken*
I saw their live show last night!! They were amazing and cute and dress exactly the same way in real life. Also, Ilana is really good at playing the drums.
Anyway, they showed a scene from the first ep of the second season, where Ilana and Abbi go to Bed Bath and Beyond, and Abbi knows all of the employees and greets them with Parent Trap style secret handshakes. I’m so excited!!!
Oh man I LOVE the piece about the fake marathoner! Pathological liars make the best stories. They’re far better than just regular frauds (who also make pretty good stories). I feel like everyone has run into a blatant web of lies with no real purpose at some point or another. Like ruins on a hillside.
Why does it not surprise me that that dummy is also involved in Amway? Because of COURSE he is.
He doesn’t see anything amiss with Amway, either. The delusion runs deep.
“During the next several years, Litton said, his Amway income…at times reached into the six figures….”
LOL OK LITTON
it is SO FASCINATING. What an elaborate deception! What effort! I don’t think I could sustain that.
i just randomly dug up that article to send to friends earlier this week. i don’t know why but “man, that dude was weird” seems to be in the air recently.
Hey, everyone needs a hobby, why not an intricate web of deceit that slowly grows to consume your actual life
Grad school is going great! Thanks for asking.
Oh man I have always found pathological liars interesting until I discovered this summer that a friend was a pathological liar. And then I found them FASCINATING. It makes me feel weird cause like, yes, I was actually emotionally hurt by this person? But also reading about people like him just enthralls me and kind of makes me feel better?
My little sister was friends with a pathological liar for yeeeeears growing up. Their friendship finally fell apart when they were in high school and a classmate of theirs was killed in a car accident. My sister returned from a trip visiting colleges with my parents to find out that this girl had been telling everyone she knew that my sister had shown up high to the dead girl’s funeral… WHICH HAPPENED WHILE MY SISTER WAS IN ANOTHER STATE.
As an Arsenal fan I learned a long time ago that Piers Morgan is a fucking asshole who should not be paid attention to.
And a snake 😀 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z37l1cxIsLY
For sure. I think it was Emmanuel Frimpong who angrily tweeted at him to “never show [his] stupid face around the Emirates again” or something, god bless.
awww man I love Frimpong
I daren’t look to see what he has done now, but I can easily imagine how assinine and offensive it could be…
I can’t edit my comment anymore, but I feel I need to clarify: I just meant to point out that the US does have a holiday that’s more analogous to Remembrance Day and it’s rife with holiday-pegged sales too. I was not trying to make light of that fact.
I totally understood. The whole holiday sales thing is terrible, and it’s the worst on a somber day like Veterans/ Remembrance Day or Memorial Day.
The one that needs to be killed with fire, though, is stores now opening on Thanksgiving. One day a year set aside to be thankful for what you have, and Walmart wants you to go out and buy more. Horrible.
I am a bit of two minds about the opening on Thanksgiving thing.
I have worked on Thanksgiving before. The company I worked for at the time let us volunteer to work on holidays that they were open, and we got paid overtime, and on Thanksgiving we got a nice spread. I wasn’t going to go home that year anyway (in fact, I don’t go home most years, even though I now work someplace that gives me Thanksgiving and the day after off, because I usually travel for Christmas instead), and it was not bad. Better than not being able to go home for Thanksgiving and having the day off and no one to spend it with, which I have also experienced.
Having said that, I expect that at many retail places, it is not entirely voluntary, and even when it is, capitalism means that it is the rare retail employee who can afford to give up a shift. And it sucks that people are being forced to give up part of their holiday.
But the flipside is that for all the outcry you see/hear, clearly there must be people who are going to the store at that point, because if there were no customers, they wouldn’t push up those hours, especially considering the PR impact.
The whole Black Friday thing is ridiculous, all around (although many people who shop on Black Friday are doing it because it is the time they can afford things that they need for themselves, like computers)
Yeah, there are definitely stores where it’s not only “not entirely voluntary,” it’s completely compulsory, as in “work Thanksgiving/Black Friday or you don’t have a job here anymore.”
Personally, I feel particularly bothered by it because it’s our biggest nonsectarian holiday. Thanksgiving should be available to everybody who wants to celebrate it. Black Friday mania seems to be making it more like a holiday for people who don’t work retail.
The store I work for is closed only 2 days a year: Christmas, and Easter. As an atheist, I would gladly work Easter to get thanksgiving off. There’s nothing in a craft store that anyone needs ON thanksgiving anyway.
My husband was weirded out by Nov 11 being seen as a suitable release date for war themed video games.
I just physically recoiled at that thought. That…no. No.
That is the very definition of Not Okay.
I am joining him in being weirded out.
That is just gross. War themed video games give me the creeps anyway – a friend was playing a FPS clearly based on a WWII beach landing once and I find that concept disturbing and disrepectful.
Remember those who fought, especially me, bboi42, who died in battle 15 times yesterday to capture. that. flag.
I mean, I get that video games are released on Tuesdays, and that November is a heavily release time because of the holiday season.
But still. Really inappropriate.
on war-themed video games: I think the entire Call of Duty series is disrespectful and a disgrace.
The G1 thing is truth. My roommate, who doesn’t have a license and whose health card has expired (for 8 months! and counting), uses his passport for ID, so I guess that’s also an option…
You can get a general government photo ID card! I’m not sure how it works in other provinces but this is the Ontario one: https://www.ontario.ca/government/ontario-photo-c…
Is using your passport for ID not common in Canada? It’s pretty much your primary I’d in the UK.
Passports are kind of bulky, while drivers’ licenses and ID cards are the same size as credit cards, so they’re a lot easier to carry around.
Was just discussing the Marathon Man story with some friends during a track club run. He started the whole sham at the big race here in Traverse City, so all the organizers have had their eye on him for a long time. It’s pretty unreal to think about.
I just really want someone to find him at a start line and follow him. HOW DOES HE DOOOO IT??
Perhaps a drone could be deployed to track him.
FIVE TIMES A WEEK, Nicole?? Hot damn.
This reaction is valid and legitimate but also makes me sad because so is Nicole’s requirement.
Life, rich tapestry, etc.
I was wondering if there’d be a comment here along those lines or if I was alone in my “hot damn” type reaction, so thank you.
I think MY secret for a good relationship/marriage is finding someone who can correctly identify when I’m pissed and want to be left alone and when I’m pissed and I want to talk about it.
(Yes, yes, I should just always Use My Words, I know. I’m working on it, I promise.)
ETA: I have found this person, thank goodness.
Absolutely! For me, this Ideal has the small addendum of being able to tell when I am actually upset vs when I am just hungry.
For example, a vignette from Saturday:
Rosie M Banks: ugh everything is terrible, I am the worst, why is the apartment such a mess, etc
Bingo Little (gently): … have you eaten anything for lunch? It’s almost 4 pm
Rosie M: …no…
Bingo: would you like some bread and cheese?
Rosie M: ….yesss?
Cut to:
Bread and cheese are consumed. All is well.
My husband keeps emergency crackers for angry times in the car. At first this offended me, but I have come to realize it’s what keeps our marriage solid.
Yep, now my partner has finally realised that I need to eat at regular intervals or I turn into a raging bitchy angry monster, we get on a lot better!
Same. With addition of belligerence as a side effect of diabetic low blood sugar event (BaaSEoDLBS). It’s not hard to see when my Beloved needs to eat. However, he will often refuse while in the throes of BaaSEoDLBS. He is 250 pounds of Nope. All I can do is put food in front of him and firmly restate as often as necessary, “I’m not speaking to you until you have some protein.”
Cheese be praised! It is the solution to so many of life’s problems, truly.
I figure your ETA is just adding more information, but it’s very tempting to read it as your having found the person between posting your comment and your edit. Like, UPDATE: SUCCESS. A CHECKMARK FOR TUESDAY.
Quick, get them microchipped before they learn to wriggle out of their collar, or half the neighborhood will try to take them in!
jebus, I can’t do that, and I’m in my head.
I’ve run the Providence marathon and plan on running it next year. This story is so ridiculous I can’t even imagine the time and effort it would take to cheat so much.
Right?? Like, dude is clearly a very motivated person… I bet you could get pretty damn good at marathon running if you put that kind of effort into, you know, actually training for and competing in marathons.
FYI, Remembrance Day isn’t in all Commonwealth countries. In New Zealand and Australia we commemorate/remember on Anzac Day, April 25th. (ANZAC = Australian and New Zealand Army Corps)
Today is Armistice Day in NZ, though, I think!
Really?? I just googled that and Wikipedia says that it’s observed in NZ. But I don’t remember anything about Armistice Day growing up, other than hearing about stuff going on in the UK. You’ve got me curious now.
I’m not in NZ at the moment, but will ask my Dad as soon as he wakes up. In about 3 or 4 hours.
It is definitely not as big a deal as Anzac Day.
So I asked Dad if the 11th was anything special in NZ
“I know its remembrance day in UK but not registered here much”
I guess maybe we technically observe Armistice Day (?) but it’s not in the public consciousness at all.
Yeah, I have never even heard of Armistice Day in a NZ context before, let alone known anyone to observe it. ANZAC Day is where it’s at.
We recognise Remembrance Day in Australia, but it’s not a public holiday. There are ceremonies and wreath-laying at the War Memorials, and most workplaces and schools observe a minute’s silence at 11am, but our bigger holiday is Anzac Day, which is a public holiday with the marches and everything.
Thanks, I wasn’t 100% sure whether Australia did anything for Remembrance Day, being a Kiwi. But apparently we recognise it too, albeit under another name, just no-one knows anything about it. News to me!
If only we had Veteran’s Day biscuits in the US…
long term relationship MUST HAVES: cuddles & treats, because in my heart I’m a happy puppy.
Pretty much this. Pet me and feed me, and my heart is pretty much yours.
Sales are the only way Americans know how to express a thing’s significance.
“Clearance Day, Clearance Day, goody goody hip hooray”
Our state religion is Unfettered Capitalism.
Best marriage advice
I don’t remember much about All American Girl, but Margaret Cho is delightful in Drop Dead Diva. If you haven’t watched it, it’s a great show on Lifetime (I think? It’s available on Netflix) with kind of a silly premise but somehow works. It’s done a terrific job of casting women and people of color as characters with authority (like, judges, law firm partners), where any other show would fill those roles with older white dudes.
On a tangentially related note, one of the things I enjoy about Sleepy Hollow is that the cast is diverse and also not related (i.e., the female lead and her boss are both black and not relatives, family friends or otherwise connected). It makes me a little more hopeful for diverse casting in prime time generally.
Except for Ichabod who is related to everyone.
I especially appreciated they way they framed it: they wanted a diverse cast, but they knew the show was going to be kind of a bloodbath, and they didn’t want to be killing off POC every week. Solution: make the POC the main characters! Kind of disappointing how that solution doesn’t seem to occur to people more often.
The daycare thing hurts my heart. I felt a little bad about my 8-9 hours a day when my girls were little. I’m not one to think “daycare=RAISED BY STRANGERS” but kids also need a home to go to where they spend some parent time.
Having worked in a daycare, I can say that while we do love your rugrats, young children really do need their parent-time.
I remember hearing a woman stalking through the halls arguing with her husband on her cellphone, and the gist of the argument was that she had given him two kids, fulfilling her end of the bargain, and now she didn’t want to be bothered when one of them was sick or needed an early daycare pickup or what-have-you. Broke my fucking HEART.
So basically what I’m saying that you shouldn’t feel bad – your feeling bad, your caring, is evidence enough that you Did It Right.
Former Day Care Director here. You are correct. Oh so correct.
I dunno, I’d hear that as normal female-socialised-person-with-male-socialised-partner-wondering-why-the-fuck-she-does->90%-of-the-parenting moan. Many of my straight female parent friends (and at least one of the gay parent ones) has had that conversation.
Yeah, I also read that as “Why do I have to do literally everything, can’t you just come get this sick kid for fuck’s sake.”
Everyone who parents has the occasional moment like that, I think, it is just if it is all the time, that is really awful and heartbreaking.
In 1994, Cho did an interview with the editor of YOLK, an Asian-American magazine in which she said, “I really despise being looked on as a foreigner because in a lot of ways maybe I wish I was a foreigner. Then I would have a country.”
Daaaamn. I feel this a lot.
Also as a 10 year old Vietnamese American girl, I was too young to really pick up the apt critiques of All-American Girl by other Asian Americans, but I was delighted that the show existed at all because hey, Asian Americans on tv! That article is such a great breakdown of Asian Americans on TV to date, include the analysis of the Mindy Kaling project, who I want to like more but can’t really bring myself to do.
The daycare article made my palms sweat and my heart ache. I have two kids and one on the way, and we are lucky beyond belief that our neighbor babysits them. It hurts some days when we are dropping them off before 7am and not picking them up until 5:30; I simply do not want to imagine myself in the shoes of the families like Marisol’s who have no choice but to have practically 24-hour daycare.
Questions for people who’ve bought Texts From Jane Eyre:
Is the King Midas chapter supposed to be just an illustration, and is the Wife of Bath chapter just 4 lines long? Or did something go wrong with my download? (I have the Kindle edition.)
Yep and Yep. (King Midas can’t text cause the phone will just turn to gold.)
My ideal is the same. Mr Wren has physically guided/propelled me from the street into an eating establishment because I have suddenly started ranting about something*, and he realized I wasn’t upset, I was just hungry.
*this could be literally anything.
ETA – this was meant to be a response to Rosie_M_Banks, but it actually kind of works on its own, so.
My G1 expired (in January! I’m super irresponsible), because I never ended up getting my G2 after five years! 9 out of 10 times I can still buy alcohol with it. Every so often at the LCBO they’re all “sorry, we can’t take this!”, and it always ends up being a guy who I am clearly older than and probably just turned 19 last week. I hate driving so much and it gives me massive anxiety, and even my parents have stopped bothering me about it despite it being a huge disappointment to my employed-by-the-car-industry dad. I mean, Toronto transit is famously terrible and I live in the suburbs so it takes forever, but it’s worth it to not stress over the daily dangers of city driving.
I feel really bad that I forgot to buy a poppy this year, so I just found one I had last year and it fell off my coat 20 minutes into my commute and is lost somewhere. VETERANS I REALLY DO CARE
If you stick a pencil eraser to the end of your poppy pin, you won’t lose it or get stabbed by it!
(I get stabbed and/or lose my poppy every year. This year I managed to rake the pin over my whole palm.)
whoa you’re a genius brb going to do that now
That … is brilliant.
No more lost poppies!
I would go to space, but I would not go with this Mars One company.
edit: now done reading the article, and wow, DEFINITELY not signing up with Mars One, thanks anyway. I don’t agree with the author’s opinion of space travel and colonization, though.
Yeah seems a little crazy. And I was thinking this (and thenit was brought up in the article): Why not try this ont he moon first? Still a huge challenge but cuts out a lot of the problems, and you would have an actual chance at sending help or bringing people home.
Oh man, I have been there!
I get a little stubborn sometimes (“What do you mean I need to eat? I’M FINE. FINE”) , so having someone say “No, you’re not fine, let’s go have some lunch” has, frankly, done wonders.
(This is a reply to pjwren!)
I briefly confused Piers Morgan and Piers Anthony in my head, oh dear.
Same.
Thanks, I feel better.
One of those “not sure which one of them would be more offended by the mis-identification” situations…
Oh man, the Mars people are going to subcontract manufacturing out to third party suppliers? Haha ask Boeing how that goes!
Also, I’m calling in sick next week to write a story about the last surviving people in a failing one-way Mars colony and in the end they all die.
speaking of marathon cheats, just read this one earlier: http://fittish.deadspin.com/if-you-cheat-in-a-mar…
DAMN, THAT MARS ARTICLE. I loved it. I loved everything about it. MarsOne is obviously a crock, but the investigating is excellent and I learned a lot about space and of course I am always comforted to know that I’m not the only one who thinks about the inevitable heat death of the universe and has a panic attack. Really incredible journalism.
I KNOW OMG. It was terrifying and mesmerizing and I like that the author freely admitted his own research gave him nightmares. Also, man, it’s crazy thinking about really leaving this planet behind to die in an alien, inhospitable place with basically no one around you. No chance for rescue or even a REFRIGERATOR MECHANIC. No hope for any basic comfort, what we can easily get by running to the supermarket any time we want. No reset button or opting out.
They would go insane and die in horrible ways and if we witnessed that, it would likely shut down every space program beyond what we currently do. God, how irresponsible (not that they’ll actually get to the launch stage).
I enjoy watching sci-fi but have never had even the slightest desire to leave my home planet. I’ll be the one keeping the lights on when everyone is blasting off to infinity or whatever. “Bye, have fun in the complete desolation of space!”
Marathon faking might be my favorite thing to read about on the internet. It’s right up there with themed-cruise experiences.
I would pay good money if someone published an essay collection comprising only these two topics.
Behold, a list of essays on the latter! http://longform.org/posts/the-longform-guide-to-c…
And, of course, the best/worst of them all, the POOP CRUISE OF 2013: http://business.time.com/2013/02/19/is-500-enough…
bless your heart! this is perfect!
Ahhh the poop cruise! I had managed to already forget about that! Which is funny, because the poop cruise is the entire reason that we took a cruise for our honeymoon (no, seriously – I am the biggest cheapskate around and when I heard about that disaster, I was like, now Carnival will have absurdly low rates! and proceeded to book us a room with a balcony, so we at least would have shaded access to the outdoors in case things went pear-shaped. I highly recommend this method of deal chasing, if you are as horrible a person as me.).
I can’t wait to read the other longform link.
I leave my daughter for 8ish regular work hours a day at an awesome daycare/nursery school down the street from my house where, after having breakfast with and getting love from both of her parents, she plays, eats, and naps with nine children her own age. She then comes home and spends three hours with both of her parents, during which we watch a little tv, eat dinner, play, and tuck her in. After reading the 24-hour daycare story,* I am going to try to not feel bad about this arrangement ever again.
* – Points, though, to the author of that story for disregarding the standard daycare script (it’s an awful prison where children are deprived of love and intellectual development because their parents don’t care what happens to them), even if the situation isn’t ideal.
Me reading that marathon cheat piece: ‘Okay, cool, that’s a lot of races, now how did he do it? More details about his life, swell, how’d he do it? Ah finally getting to the end, this is where they’ll reveal how he… AHH WHY IS IT OVER. WHY IS IT OVER AND I STILL DON’T KNOW?!’
I don’t understand how the last paragraph is a completely sanguine, ‘Welp, guess we’ll never know’ and not the author saying, “And then I went batshit wonky bonkersface over the fact that I spent months researching this man and his secrets continue to elude me. I am consumed by my ignorance. It has destroyed my life and frayed my sanity.”
that last paragraph made me angry (irrationally, the piece is fine). I want to know!
I feel like at a certain point these guys might as well give in and un-DQ the guy. I mean, clearly he’s winning whatever bizarre-assed game he’s playing while everyone else is doing the marathon, and it seems like a lot more involved and impressive an accomplishment than running pretty fast anyway. The whole twist ending with his incognito clothes is just perfect
I feel like the author hit his word count and just stopped writing. I also found it profoundly unsatisfying to read that much and get to no sort of conclusion.
There was an episode of “Monk”, where a killer’s alibi was that he was running a marathon when the victim was murdered. He was at the start and end of the race and his chip times confirmed he moved throughout the race at a reasonable speed and never left the course. It turned out that after a certain point, he ran off course, attached his time chip to a dog’s collar and the dog ran the remainder of the race while the guy killed someone. (At least, that’s how I remember it.)
So, I’m just going to believe that this guy has a dog partner-in-crime, too.
Thank you, this is reasonably satisfying!
…and is a serial killer
Here in the Vaterland a driver’s license costs about 1500-1600$, good enough a reason for me not to have one at 28. The hidden costs for me, so far, were one job that I otherwise would totally have landed. The guy who interviewed me couldn’t quite believe that I didn’t have a license and was very polite to me after, like you would be towards someone who has a slight mental deficency :/
Srsly, f*** the tyranny of cars.
What really took my breath away about the whole Piers Morgan thing was when on Twitter he told Ta-Nehisi Coates that his response to Piers was “ignorant,” and to “be better” !!!!!!!!!!!
lol wut
ALSO he busted out “people like you” which, wow.
I expect Piers Morgan to be a self-loving idiot, so that didn’t shock me. I mean, anyone clueless enough to write that column in the first place is gonna be too clueless not to underestimate TNC.
You know what shocked me? That John Legend would speak up about it.
The way Remembrance Day is commemorated here in Ontario (though it’s probably the same nationwide) has always made me vaguely uncomfortable. Not the concept of remembering the fallen, which I have no problem with- but the ever-present attendant suggestion that the wars Canada has fought in were for the noble cause of peace and freedom instead of either protecting British interests or . . . well still protecting British interests, but in the name of colonialism instead of border protection. There’s always this undertone of glorifying Canada as this great peacekeeping nation looking out for human rights, which has never been true. And it seems especially disengenous to claim that while commemorating WWII, during which we interned out own citizens and turned away Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. There’s this divide between “the individual soldiers who went over did so for a good cause” (which is true) and “the government sent them for a good cause” (which is . . . eh.) It seems like it’s become more of an occasion for the Prime Minister to come out and talk about how great Canada is than actually remembering the horrors of what Canadian soldiers went through- the stupid, wasteful deaths that happened because they were sent over by a government that was incompetent at best and callous at worst. And a government that still treats returning veterans terribly, too: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/02/16/inj…
(It bothers me for the same reason that we rarely seem to hear the words of actual veterans- and when we do, it’s stuff like “In Flanders Fields,” which is used as a recruitment tool. “Suicide In The Trenches,” for instance, never seems to come up in remembrance ceremonies, even though it was written by a guy who was actually on the front lines, and had a lot to say about the way his government treated their soldiers/the glorification of “going over.”)
Also didn’t Canada intern some Italian immigrants during WWII, which is pretty interesting?
Yep. Japanese, German, and Italian-Canadians during WWII, and Ukranian-Canadians during WWI. And the Japanese internees were told they’d get their possessions back after the war, but the government actually auctioned them off and kept the profits. A bunch of internees were either deported back to Japan after the war, or sent to Toronto- they weren’t allowed to return to British Columbia, which is where most of them came form.
Whoa! That’s interesting. Thanks for sharing.
*applause.gif*
Remember when the Simpsons guy was like “oh all wars are going to be fought by robots on the tops of high mountains” and now WE’VE DONE IT!
ETA: EVEN BETTER: what if we built a robot army, then had children control the robots but told the children that it was just a game? Big time saver all around.
That has to be rare though, don’t you think? Mostly it’s more like, I love working, I need money, I also love and need my kids, I don’t have a resident grandma or a non-working spouse, there’s not a perfect solution.
Of course that attitude is rare … but regardless of how much or little you resent your kids, they still need parent time. (Although, maybe let them have parent time with the parent who doesn’t resent them?)
Do you think the government is ever gonna do anything about employers who purposely keep people on part time hours so they don’t have to give them health insurance? Probably not, right?
One would hope, but… all evidence points to “no way Jose” (and also “Jose, get back to work and stop thinking about silly things like ‘fair wage’ and ‘human rights’!”)
Of course not, because if companies had to pay people actual money and benefits and stuff, their profits might go down, and if we let profits go down for the sake of social welfare that actually makes everyone worse off because capitalism somehow, and then bald eagle babies cry. Do you want to make baby eagles cry? WELL DO YOU?
I’m Canadian so yes.
Well then. Carry on.
Health care policy people would LOVE to make buying your own insurance a reasonable alternative to getting it through your employer — the insurance marketplaces are a first step in that direction, but obviously not a game-changer at the level of “changing how employers think about benefits.” Unfortunately, I wouldn’t expect the US health care system to get more progressive any time soon 🙁
Hahaha. And interfere with the sacred corporations?
My last job did actually offer health insurance to its part-time employees, but it was so obviously just a pretense of benefits (possibly designed to distract from lawsuits they’d had over pay issues). Everything they sent me about it was plastered with notices about how it didn’t technically qualify as real insurance coverage. I’m trying to imagine them being compelled to offer actual insurance and it’s laughable.
I’d rather just separate my insurance from my employer altogether.
Margaret Cho is one of my personal saints; I sometimes think that if I lost track of myself, the voice that came out of me would be hers. As it is, I’m not that brave or good at swearing. Any time I see evidence of improvement in how ANY marginalized group is represented, I offer thanks to her for never resting and always moving things forward.
FWIW, I like your alternative to “spirit animal”.
I not-so-humbly offer you my extensive Advanced Swearing skills. At your service anytime. Will swear for free, or for dark chocolate.
This should go in an open thread, but it’s painful now and I know you Toasties are going to understand, also I’m not sure about putting it in the comment thread for the related post today!
After the posts/Link Roundups this week talking about abortion and especially that NYT piece, I had a horrible nightmare just before waking this morning. In it, I happened to get pregnant (how was irrelevant/undreamt) and was at a women’s health clinic to get the pills to induce an abortion, but I was very calm and certain. The clinic staff told me to come back in 3 days after thinking about it, because no one could be that calm and decided. My dream skipped ahead to going back and some old white man doctor insisting that I wasn’t in sound mind to make the decision (just like in that MotherJones article about the judges and teenagers). Meanwhile, the hormone changes were doing a number on me and fucking with my depression (not unexpected – PMS heightens it already), so my mom and I were trying to figure out the fastest way to get the abortion (travel time + waiting days, etc.), and talking to Toasties for emotional support…
And I woke up with a text from my mom. I was feeling really shaken by the nightmare and sick to my stomach, especially as being woken so suddenly meant my brain didn’t transition from dreamland properly, so it still felt REAL to me. I tweeted about it to relieve the brain pressure (“just woke from a terrible nightmare that I was pregnant and being refused abortion services”) and within five minutes some idiot @replied me with “maybe ur dream is bcuz someon in heaven is telling you to keep the baby”
I’m still upset about that idiot’s tweet. It instantly made me feel like my dream was real, a few moments of terror. And it was only a dream! I’m furious for the people who WEREN’T dreaming that they tweeted similar things at, from what I saw in their timeline. Why do people have to be so horrible? Why does my nightmare have to be so many peoples’ reality?
It is shit that you nightmared about your own civil rights being stripped in your own shitty country, who should be taking care of you and being grateful yo even have citizens. Boycott America for real.
I’m the photographer who took the 24 Hour Daycare photos. I’m sweating with joy to see it linked to here, and love your responses!
My son was in daycare while I was photographing the piece, and I did feel sad about Marisol’s arrangement. She didn’t get to see her kids enough and the daycare providers were lovely but not actual parents. The younger daughter seemed sort of unaware, but the older daughter had a sadness and a heaviness about her that were really difficult to see. She knew. The part that made me insane with rage was that neither of Marisol’s jobs would give her full-time work because they didn’t want to offer benefits so she had to work two jobs and hustle to even see her kids. Great work, America! We luv moms! Buuuuut we don’t support them.
Thank you for this. I’m involved at some level in trying to improve wages for low-wage workers. It’s astonishing how little compassion my opponents have for the workers’ children.
It has taken me all day (at work) to finish that marathon piece. I am very upset to come to the end and find no resolution.
Hello yes hi I just came back here for the exact same reason. I finally finished after starting first thing this morning, and man. Nothing. So complicated though!
Isaiah Thompson has been doing a great job of covering the Civil Forfeiture issue in Philadelphia. This 2012 article led to a class-action federal civil rights lawsuit against the DA’s office.
http://citypaper.net/The-Cash-Machine/
What is even going on with that Marathon Guy!
A twin crouching in the brush??
Honest to god I think the secret to a happy marriage is separate beds. Possibly houses.
Yes! Half leg sticking out thing is a valid form of temperature control.
(One time I had to share a bed with a friend in a freezing cabin. I burritoed up and stole all the sheets. We worked out a separate blanket arrangement the next night.)
Or pin it on with an earring or one of those tiny Canada flag pins.
One off his tits on cocaine, so I hear.
What a couple of pricks, and how brave of you – that is tough to do; and being treated so poorly is bound to shake you (after noise torture). I hope they spontaneously combust.