Sansa is putting on roughly a pound a day this week. Also, she likes to join me in the shower, for reasons known only to herself. She thinks her dad is more fun than I am, but she loves me more, and is very very bonded to me, which is all I wanted. We are one organism.
14 year old Ashima Shirashi might as well be a different species from the rest of us, that’s how good she is at rock climbing (if you are not familiar with sport climbing or bouldering ratings, just know that the below quote is basically saying “she is a Jedi”):
Another standard is the rating regimen. Sport and trad climbs are given a degree of difficulty, according to the Yosemite Decimal System: 1 is a walk on flat land, and 5 is a vertical climb, or close to it. So actual climbs are rated 5.0 through 5.15, with additional subcategories of “a” through “d.” The hardest routes at the moment are 5.15c—there are just two. (The system is open-ended, so it’s only a matter of time before someone pioneers a 5.16a.) In northeast Spain, last March, when Ashima was thirteen, she became the first woman, and the youngest person of either sex, ever to “send” (complete) a 5.15. It is a route called Open Your Mind Direct, which was recently upgraded from a 5.14d to a 5.15a, owing to a handhold’s having broken off. She spent just four days “projecting” the route—that is, studying and solving all the problems on it by trial and error. The men who had done it before had spent weeks, if not months. Obviously, the rating system is also subjective, but for Ashima this feat was an annunciation. If she could send a 5.15 during spring break from eighth grade, what more could she do?
Bouldering has a similar rating system, with a scale of V1 to V15. Ashima is the second woman to have sent more than one V14. (She beat her predecessor in a competition last year.) In a notable session this fall, an hour north of the city, in a wooded area that climbers call the Master Bedroom, Ashima ticked off a series of difficult problems: a V11 called Reckless, a V12 called Wetness to Fatness, and a V14 called Nuclear War, which, in the nine years since it was first climbed, had turned back all attempts until hers. She announced her performance on Instagram: “V11, V12 and V14 in a DAY! HOLY CRAP!!!!!” On Thanksgiving, she posted a photo from Texas on Instagram: “I shocked myself by getting the first female ascent of the legendary razor blade climb, Terre de Sienne (V14)!” (Also Federer-like is her way of blending frank amazement at her own capabilities with an air of humility and ease.)
Depending on which state you live in, your driver’s license may not be sufficient ID to fly domestic with in the near future (I doubt this will actually happen, but best to keep informed):
In September, we reported that the Department of Homeland Security would begin to enforce the Real ID Act for air travel in 2016, which would require secondary identification for licenses issued by four U.S. states. Now, the DHS has upped the number of licenses that don’t meet their standards, which means that if you’re carrying one from Alaska, California, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Carolina, Washington state, Puerto Rico, Guam, or the U.S. Virgin Islands, you might find yourself turned away if you’re not prepared.
We were just invited to become a Featured Publisher on This.cm, so please follow me if you have an account and share Toast stories! I’ll be linking my favourite Toast story of the day most days, and email me (nicole@ the-toast dot net) if you have a PARTICULAR Toast favourite of your own! Also, who should I follow?
Friend of The Toast Rebecca Scherm (she wrote “Charm School” for us) is embarking on a book tour, and would love to see Toasties, so check it out to see if she’s coming to a bookstore near you! Nikki loves Unbecoming, the book in question, and there was a little convo in the comments a few weeks ago about how it’s getting that NEW GONE GIRL marketing, but is actually fabulous and complex.
Transgender Headlines From the Future, Lightly Idealized (Meredith is the best):
Brooks Brothers Renames Itself As Brooks Siblings
Zero Trans People Were Murdered in 2016
Germaine Greer Drastically Shifts Stance, Says “Lopping Off Your Dick DoesMake You a Woman”
This is one of the VERY best Ham4Ham installments:
Dr. Zizmor is retiring, and I hope he finds joy for all the joy he brought me:
Zizmor began running the kitschy rainbow ads in the early 1980s.
“I got a lot of heat when I started,” he told Business Insider in 2009. “No one was on the subway. No one was even advertising.”
Rembert Browne on Tyler Perry (like everything Rembert does, this is so much better than you can imagine, and generous and warm and probing and spiky, and I love it, and we are blessed to be alive during The Age of Rembert):
During the curtain call, Tyler Perry walked out last, dressed as himself — jeans, a shirt, a black fitted cap. “You guys have always been so faithful to me,” he said to the crowd, which was still in the middle of a standing ovation. “Always right there by my side, always supporting me, even when it wasn’t that great.” He then broke into an old-lady voice that wasn’t quite the Madea old-lady voice, close to voice of the old lady two seats down. “Bless his heart, he’ll get better.” He thanked them for watching his four television shows currently on OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network), especially the breakout hit The Haves and the Have Nots, the network’s highest-rated show ever, which will return January 5. The season-three finale pulled in 3.71 million viewers, making it the third-highest scripted cable telecast of the summer, only behind episodes of Pretty Little Liars and Fear the Walking Dead. “Let’s face it, there’s no need for me to go out there [onstage] anymore,” Perry would tell me later. “The only reason is to be in front of them, and to tell them how much I appreciate them, make them laugh, see their faces — and it does a great thing for me and my heart, too. It just gets me reconnected.” There’s an argument to be made that these days, Perry is largely responsible for keeping the Oprah endeavor relevant, and with shows I’d only just learned existed. But that’s how Perry has always operated: success in plain sight.
Kate Authur’s MAJESTIC ROUND-UP of all the shows and movies we will be obsessed with in 2016 is balm to my soul, and there were even a lot of surprises, like Kerry Washington’s Anita Hill movie, which is going to be INFURIATING and GREAT:
God, this cast! Kerry Washington as Anita Hill, Wendell Pierce as Clarence Thomas, Greg Kinnear as Joe Biden, Treat Williams as Ted Kennedy, Dylan Baker as Orrin Hatch, Jennifer Hudson as Angela Wright (the other Thomas accuser) — and it goes on. Rick Famuyiwa, the director of 2015’s Sundance hit Dope, takes on the Thomas confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, which led to one of the most divisive, revealing, pivotal moments in American feminism (and institutional misogyny). Considering its ending, spoiler alert: Confirmation will be a horror movie.
Now, here is The Millions’ version for BOOKS (WHY CAN’T I READ QUEEN OF THE NIGHT YET?:
The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee: We’ve been awaiting Chee’s sophomore novel, and here it finally is! A sweeping historical story — “a night at the opera you’ll wish never-ending,” says Helen Oyeyemi — and the kind I personally love best, with a fictional protagonist moving among real historical figures. Lilliet Berne is a diva of 19th-century Paris opera on the cusp of world fame, but at what cost? Queen of the Night traffics in secrets, betrayal, intrigue, glitz, and grit. And if you can judge a book by its cover, this one’s a real killer. (Sonya)
Dayna Evans thinks she cured her cluster headaches with shrooms, and since cluster headaches are literally the worst and most painful things in the entire world, I am Team Go Ahead And Try Whatever, especially if you’re already using an oxygen tank (there are Beloved Friends of The Toast who are cluster sufferers, guys):
Lots of cluster-headache sufferers end up with PTSD from their illness, even if the headaches go into remission. Callison told me that he scored an 88 on the PTSD test, and that even though he’d been mostly pain-free for ten weeks, he stays active on CH forums as a way to focus his attention. Clusterheads fear that the headache will come back and ruin their lives all over again, no matter what method of self-medicating worked in the past.
Mushrooms worked for me. 5-MeO-DALT, a legal but not-FDA-approved synthetic tryptamine you can buy online, worked for Callison. But the worst sufferers — sometimes getting hits eight or nine times a day — are eager to take CH out from the fringes of medicine in order to find a less scandalous source of relief. “There are as many people with cluster headaches as muscular dystrophy,” Dr. Rosenberg told me, “and while muscular dystrophy is horrible, we put all this money into it, and as of yet, there have been no promising treatments.”
Whichever science sufferers turn to to keep hope alive, there is a sense of camaraderie among the margins. “You can’t let this thing control your life,” one clusterhead told me over the phone in September. “You have to live between the hits.”
Lauren McKeon on being first devastated by her husband leaving her, then totally fine:
The next day, my body was the Grand Canyon, vast and hollowed out. My mind obsessed over a dead narrative: wife, mother. Me, who was never quite sure I wanted to be a wife. Me, who hadn’t decided whether or not I wanted children. Me, undone. With him gone, who am I? With him gone, I’ll never have a baby. With him gone. As if I’d wanted one. As if he was my only chance to become whatever I was supposed to be.
Maybe I wasn’t the canyon. Maybe I was the hole in the sandbox from Robert Munsch’s Murmel, Murmel, Murmel, only impossibly deeper and assuredly empty. No babies here. No story. No life. Gone. Gone. Gone. Maybe I was both. Or maybe I was a thunderstorm—loudly inconsolable, pelting tears, taking up more space than I ever had before.
The day after that one, I bought new pillows.
This poem, 9 Things I Would Like to Tell Every Teenage Girl, by Melissa Newman-Evans is great.
“6. You remember that metaphor about killing you being stealing you voice? Sometimes, the world will actually try to kill you. You’ll never deserve it. Telling you to be ready is pointless. Telling you to prepare yourself is just another way to blame you when it happens which is why
7. You need to hold up your sisters.
8. Everyone is your sister.”
Okay, but the best part of that Ham4Ham is that Jasmine Cephas Jones and Anthony Ramos are dating so he’s definitely sitting there watching his gf completely KILL his part in the show and SMILING ADORABLY THE WHOLE TIME.
uggggggggh those two are so cute i can’t handle it
Also, everyone mark off March 25th on your calendars because DAREDEVIL SEASON 2 AND ELEKTRA IS GORGEOUS AND ALSO A WOC SO IT’S BASICALLY GONNA BE THE BEST WHYYYY AM I GONNA BE AT A BACHELORETTE PARTY THAT WHOLE WEEKEND
On the one hand I’m a little disappointed that we’ll get Daredevil season 2 before Luke Cage (it has Misty Knight, people!), but on the other hand: Elektra! And we’ll get the Punisher – I’ve always enjoyed the Daredevil/Punisher dynamic in the comics.
Speaking of comics: Hellcat #1 was adorable.
Yeeees, I desperately want Luke Cage to be out ASAP. I NEED ALL THE MISTY KNIGHT IN MY LIFE. I can’t wait until November-ish! I just hope they didn’t rush the production of season 2, though everything I’ve seen so far looks awesome and ELEKTRA ELEKTRA ELEKTRAAAA (also the Punisher which is gonna be FASCINATING to see in the Daredevil context).
I desperately need to get a Hellcat and a Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur subscription but I’m waiting until next month so I can rebuild my bank account a little after vacation.
NO THAT IS TOO CUTE. I had no idea JCJ and AR were dating! How adorable and wonderful! Aaaaahhhh this cast.
Ahhhh I thought they were a thing but wasn’t sure, omg they are the most adorable! (I also love Renee Elise Goldsberry and Daveed Diggs playing off each other in this, they’re both just like supernovas of charisma.)
My crush on Jasmine Cephas Jones is OUT OF THIS WORLD RN. Very very jealous of Anthony Ramos.
OH MY GOD. I knew it wasn’t just good acting when they did “No Air!”
ARE THEY ACTUALLY DATING THAT IS LIKE A PUPPY DATING KITTEN UGHHHHHHH
Guys, I am such an Ashima Shirashi fangirl and the videos of her climbing are just insane. My favorite involves using her hands and feet to launch herself several feet up and to the right and then catching herself with one hand (I also like the videos of adult men being smoked/totally intimidated by her at a rock climing gym in New York).
Also, my dad used to get cluster headaches when I was a kid, and they are, indeed, the worst. I remember my mom waking me up in the middle of the night so we could all go to the emergency room and my dad could essentially sedated because he hadn’t been able to sleep in several days due to pain.
Ashima is incredible. I’m going to show that to my 8 year old daughter as soon as she wakes up. We got into climbing in the last year, and yesterday I was all proud of myself for doing my first dyno (where you jump from one hold to another). That shit is hard, and Ashima is doing one after another like it’s nothing. Can you imagine the things she’s going to be doing in another 10 years?
I have had a headache on and off for the last 24 hours, and suddenly feel much better about it. It didn’t require sedation at all! I am winning at life.
She is awesome! There’s a natural build that really suits climbing (tall, strong and light) but instead of letting that limit her she works around it and uses smaller holds than big people can dream of and dynos every where and has basically reinvented climbing for short people and all because she was having so much fun with it. And she always has excellent trousers!
Oh, Rebecca Scherm WILL be at a bookstore near me and I just got Unbecoming for Christmas, so thank you for this heads up!
Hi! Shameless self-promotion alert:
I’m doing a fundraiser for diversity scholarships for archival students (the SAA Mosaic scholarship). It’s a Society6 store that I’m stocking with science-y designs and skeletons I ripped out of the public domain and ran through Photoshop. Very fancy, yes. But also free shipping until Jan 10th! https://society6.com/publicdemesne?promo=9CQY38G9…
More designs being added this week. Tell your goth friends!
I have many friends who share my love of skeletal things. I’ll definitely be passing this along, thanks!
*FIST BUMP*
(’tis @ananarchivist)
*Scrolling past*
“Aw man, that’s a sweet shirt!”
*Sad, dawning realization that she is in fact a goth.*
For my mystery friends https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/w…
It’s like -20 C here today so I’m freezing at my desk drinking ginger tea and reading rather than doing work.
As someone who went to school in Canada, I don’t see how you could do anything BUT drink tea and read in -20 C weather.
Oh wow, so this ohioan just went and converted today’s temp (12) to C and it is -11C. Which totally makes me feel better about ranting when the local paper said “it will be cooler than last week (last week it got to 50F), and brisk. No, 12 degrees is a little colder than “brisk”.
Is it just me, or are a lot of the states where driver’s licenses aren’t acceptable to the TSA the states where undocumented immigrants can get licenses?
Lots of undocumented immigrants *have* to fly with a license or they plain can’t fly, being without documents and all. Seems pretty deliberate to me.
YEP! Ding ding ding!
Oh wow, I only knew abut this in relation to a state that doesn’t grant licenses to undocumented people. They refuse to change it there because actual elected officials who are charged with making laws are paranoid that the Real ID is some sort of tracking device that Obama will use to take their guns. Good to know that everyone at all levels of government is also terrible!
well, yeah
the whole point of the license, flying-wise, is documentation that you are who you say you are and you’ve got a complete history known to the feds, the TSA doesn’t really care whether you can drive
I’m not disagreeing with you, but I also think we are turning into the sort of society whose government restricts movement.
‘the police everywhere checking that your papers are in order before letting you go anywhere and surveilling you from cradle to grave don’t accept guys who evaded every prior security check even though they can demonstrably parallel park’ is the weirdest possible critique of the security state.
Yep, of course.
Also, when I first started hearing about this list of states, New York was on it too, but it looks like they (we) have gotten an extension through 2016, despite not actually being in compliance with the Real ID act.
Workplace diversity policies apparently make white guys feel threatened: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/w…
(I have a lot of thoughts about this, but also a lot of work to do in my workplace that I don’t think even has a diversity policy, so I thought I’d just leave the link here and let you guys have at it.)
My boss told me proudly that although they don’t “do” diversity, they totally aced it on this year’s new partners: one woman, one Asian man, and two white dudes. Okay then.
A certain official at my institution may or may not have recently sent out an email with the phrase, “for the first time ever, we have an African-American department chair.”
Congratulations; you have successfully made it out of the 1960s.
BECAUSE WHO WILL STAND UP FOR THE WHITE MENZ EVEN THOUGH THEY’RE STILL A VAST MAJORITY AMIRITE?
Poor widdle men. (Insert white male tears mug here.)
“Build your own wig” made me want to design “Build your own Whig,” with options for things like aristocratic debauchery, progressive policies, opposition to absolute monarchies. But I’m lazy so I’m just posting it here instead.
A+
I just watched The Duchess for the first time and the costumes and wigs are epic. And now I get my own!
Comment hijack but if you loved The Duchess and like to read historical non-fic by some chance, you should check out Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman. It’s a biography of Georgiana and it’s even more fascinating than the movie, especially the far more complex relationship between her, her husband, and Elizabeth Foster. Plus, Georgiana is just plain fascinating tbh.
I’ve never really been into costume dramas or history much, but recently I’ve been trying to make an effort to at least watch some of the movies; and there’s actually a few movies about powerful women, I watched The Duchess and Young Victoria over the weekend and I’m totally digging it.
The Duchess did kind of break me a little bit though; she was so powerless against her husband, all he had to do was threaten to take her children and there was nothing she could do!
I’ll keep an eye out for this book, I do like biographies anyway, and she seems like a very interesting woman (I didn’t know it was based on a true story until the end, I’m that bad at history!)
I go through phases, but I’ve always loved historical dramas about women. The Duchess and Young Victoria are very good. You can’t find them on Netflix, but Amazon Video has “Elizabeth” and the sequel, “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” which are both pretty good movies about Queen Elizabeth I.
And yes, it is a very upsetting story, although if I’m remembering right, her husband is a lot more viciously cruel in the movie where in the biography he just came off a lot more… cold? Like he was just very unfeeling, I don’t know how to explain it better. (I know there’s a scene in the movie where he forces himself on her but that isn’t in the biography that I remember.)
She is really interesting though. One of those “wouldn’t have considered herself a feminist because of the times but was incredibly progressive in her own way” kind of ladies. (Also if you like that era, I read a great biography about six women from the French Revolution, too!)
I understand what you mean, apart from the rape he’s mostly just cold; and I think he was very much a man of his time unfortunately, men could do whatever they wanted and women were property who did what they were told.
I didn’t know that they had added the assault for the movie, but I was struck by how well handled it was; they let it be horrible and brutal (without being grotesque) and showed the damaging effect it had on her. I’m so used to sexual assault as a plot device I saw it coming and thought ‘Oh great, he’s going to rape her and then “make it up” to her and then it’ll be happily ever after.’ and I’m glad they didn’t go that way, and really showed how powerless she was because she was married to him.
Since the post here about ranking the 6 wives of Henry VII I am getting more into learning about them, they sound like a baller bunch of women. I watched a documentary speculating about the last days of Anne Boleyn awhile ago, a lot of it was bollox but it was entertaining (and fun watching the academics fight it out, with the bonus that most of them were women, and the one proposing the super boring theory was an old white guy who just complained about how silly the rest of them were.)
Yes, he was very much a man of his time, ugh. And I believe the assault was added, yeah. Normally that would bother me but I think they did it in order to better show just how trapped she was in the marriage and how he controlled her. Some of the futility of women’s lives doesn’t come across the same way now, when we can’t fully understand just how powerless they were in marriages, you know?
Ooh yeah, I am all for anything about them, too! My recommendation on that front is always Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation Of The Wives Of Henry VIII by Karen Lindsay. I think I’ve recommended that on here before but MAN did it really open my mind and expose just how much of the history of all of them is warped by you know, patriarchal society/historians.
I understand that; modern audiences probably would struggle with just how powerless a women was then. Personally I got the message when he started sleeping with her friend and insisted that she continue living in the house, but when Georgaina asked to behave in the same way (Fair request TBH) he said no! Colossal cunt.
I’ll have to add that to the list; I don’t read anywhere near enough anymore, and when I do its mostly just the same stuff over and over again!
Sorry to butt in — could you tell me the name of the biography about the French Revolution?
I have been meaning to watch the Duchess for ages — I didn’t know it was about Georgiana! I’m just finishing up a conference abstract about a Mary Robinson novel (The Natural Daughter) where Georgiana (as the Duchess of Chatsworth) saves the protagonist from social distress.
This convo thread is just another reminder of why I love the Toast!
There is a never a need to apologize about butting in on a book convo! 🙂
It’s Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France, by Lucy Moore. (I went through a big French-Revolution era ladies non-fic phase last year. There was this book, the Georgiana of Devonshire book, and also Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser, and Marie-Thérèse, Child of Terror: The Fate of Marie Antoinette’s Daughter by Susan Nagel.)
Actually I’m pretty sure “The Natural Daughter” is mentioned in the Georgiana biography!
I almost walked out of “Elizabeth” because it was so historically inaccurate in the first ten minutes that my (now former) early modernist self was cringing. The HBO miniseries was far better and has the added benefit of being able to watch Helen Mirren instead of Cate Blanchett.
I know, LMAO, but I still love it for some reason despite how horribly inaccurate it was? Like I recently rewatched it (after writing my 70 page capstone project on Queen Elizabeth) and kept shouting about how wrong everything was AND YET I still like watching it. I think i just like Cate’s Elizabeth, even if the rest of it is a mess. I watched another miniseries, a BBC one I think, and I hate the actress who plays Elizabeth in that.
“Build your own wig” can be a game within the game of “Build your own Whig”:
I wish I’d learned to code because I would be SO DOWN FOR THIS.
“A Father Lets His Son Dress As a Girl for Halloween and Doesn’t Congratulate Himself” – for real though.
And Doesn’t Take Shots At ‘Slutty’ Costumes Girls Wear.
I’ve got the morbs, the woefuls, and the shutters up today. I’ve got to figure out how to put on a good face for work.
Feeling you on the morbs.
So much morbs today. Touch of the woefuls too.
I wish I could say I’ve got the perpetual. So delightfully vague and promising, but not for ladies? Instead I’ve got… the corset on? With the shutters up?
This is like a Victorian version of Darmok, and I love it.
Darmok, his corset unfurled.
Oh my stars and garters.
Toasties, what would you call your bar trivia team, if you had one? I have been recruited for my friends’ team and am required to help them come up with a good team name.
So far all I have thought of this morning is: The Hons and Rebels, or The Hands of Fate.
In Museum School, we were Inherent Vice – which sounds badass and was also relevant to our work. (You’re welcome to use 🙂
The Electric Mayhem
my now-mostly-defunct team is the Quizzards of Oz. Puns are the best for trivia imho!
I’ve gone with “The Donner Party” before. How about “Naked Fisticuffs”, or “Misandrist Mayhem”, or “Nopetopus Rex.”
Team Discovery Channel!!
We went with Team Awesome. And then won #smug
Riverbottom Nightmare Band has been my team name for every team I have ever been on.
Virginia Woolfenstein 3D
I’ve only done trivia a couple times with the whole team being just me and my dude, so both times we just called ourselves The Indoor Kites after Richard Ayoade and Noel Fielding on one of the Big Fat Quizzes of the Year. Mostly because we realized that “Richard and Noel as teammates on a quiz show” was a pretty good descriptor of our relationship dynamic in general.
Did you watch them being a team again last night? I was so hoping that they would win.
My go-to is “The Splendid Toadfish.” I tend to stick to the “obscure animal” theme- the Patagonian Cavies, Okapi Party, Baikal Seals…
We were usually The Fighting Flamingos in college. Not quite obscure, but if you really want to have fun with it, you can dress in all pink.
The Know-Nothings. Lower their expectations while showing you do, in fact, know something.
I had completely forgotten about this until now, but in 9th grade art class one day, our teacher had us play a jeopardy type game. My friends and I called our team Pea Soup. Clearly this was the result of 14-year-olds being goofy, but I kinda like it.
When we did Star Wars-themed trivia, my team was called I HATE SAND.
All of our good trivia team names have been Game of Thrones-themed. For ASOIAF trivia we’re Harrenhal and Oates, and for nerd trivia once a month we’re Existential Dreadfort.
Existential Dreadfort could also be a great Twitter parody account
Manifest Destiny’s Child
Celebrity mashup names are a good way to go in general – WEB Du Bois II Men is the best one I’ve ever come up with.
I’ve seen teams go by both Bloodbath And Beyond and Bed, Bath, and Beyonce.
When I was a trivia host a lot of times the team names were relevant to something in current events that week or were an attempt to get me to say something ridiculous (e.g. “The number of times I have fucked a goat” and then their score). The only team names I ever refused to say were an AIDS joke and a joke about the Boston Marathon bombing.
We were all ladies and therefore went as Female Trouble. Please use it, we’re all several states apart now and I wish to bequeath it.
This is highly specific to my group, so you can borrow it if you like but it won’t make any sense: at the trivia night where our group first started to form a few years ago (like, we were all on the subreddit for our ‘hood and decided to meet IRL at this trivia night), the old emcee was awful. Incomprehensible, heavy accent, music was too loud, etc. But one day she was reading a question, and could not pronounce Tchaikovsky. So she pronounced it taco chef-ski. Best thing ever. So Taco Chefsky was our trivia name forever and ever afterward.
My bar trivia team is called Young, Scrappy, and Hungry and it brings me great joy to hear them call our names in the standings each time. We’ve won once and come in the top 3 a few times!
Edit: and before that, another group of friends and I were called the Purple Cobras of America, which I did not learn was a reference to the movie Dodgeball until like…3 years after the fact.
Not trivia, but my all-female bowling team was the Drunken Monkeys. We killed despite being pleasantly plastered most of the time, obviously.
Toasts, I went to the doctor yesterday so she could tell me I was just imagining a lump in my breast, and instead she said “yes, I feel it” and now I have a mammogram scheduled for 3pm.
Any and all “What, no! Breasts are just lumpy, everything is fine” anecdotes are welcome.
I experienced a similar scenario a few years ago. It was a totally benign cyst, it waxes and wanes and we’re good friends now.
THANK YOU
I have one of those too. According to Wikipedia, they are sometimes known as “breast mice” so I named mine Mrs. Frisby.
DNW mice in my breasts!
But I’m glad you made friends with yours.
I’ve had three of those false alarms. Not every lump is bad. Some people have fibrocystic breasts.
The odds are ever in your favor here. WARNING: do NOT make my mistake and look this up online.
It’s natural to be scared but most likely it is nothing. Fingers crossed.
Ugh, Dr. Google is the worst.
Convinced myself I had appendicitis on New Year’s Day. It was trapped wind. All the farting I was doing should have been a sign, but THAT CAN ALSO BE A SYMPTOM OF APPENDICITIS SO
I did the opposite and chowed down on Gas-X until I passed out from sepsis, because appendicitis isn’t gas and sometimes when you think it’s gas, they rupture and then you almost die so better safe than sorry, is what I’m saying here
Thank you. And I have intentionally stayed far away from any googling. I’m pretty sure the only relevant googling would be ‘cute animal gifs’.
Animals gifs are always the answer.
Several! I had cysts in my early 20s and now just have super-dense, super-lumpy breast tissue, this is totally a thing and you’re fine.
Going to use “this is totally and thing and I’m fine” as my breathing mantra, thank you! 🙂
Hi, yes I had something very similiar happen to me 2 years ago, I went for the mammogram and it was a cyst. I am not sure how old you are but when I spoke to my girlfriends about it (we are all in our mid – later 30s) they all echoed similiar experiences. Breasts can be lumpy but it is always good when a dr is being cautious. Sending you love!
Thanks so much. I’m 45, and had grown complacent about my breasts just… doing their thing.
I had a breast cancer scare three years ago. Turns out there are like 1,000 different kinds of benign lumpies that boobs have on the regular, many of which look like cancer at first. I had to have a biopsy and everything, which was super scary and ruined Christmas that year, but everything turned out fine and I have been deemed one who has cystic breasts.
Best of luck and I’m sending you good thoughts.
Thank you. I think I might try re-framing this whole experience as “getting a benign cyst checked on”.
My mum gets benign cysts in her breasts, not a big deal. She got more when she was first on HRT – are you on any kind of hormonal birth control/HRT at all?
Mirena implant – haven’t been on a pill kind of birth control in…. IDEK? Maybe 18 years?
Slightly OT – have you ever had your Mirena taken out and a new one put back in? Getting mine several years ago was the worst.thing.of.all.time for me, and I’m quite scared of getting it replaced even though I need to.
ooh ooh I did that this summer and it was not NEARLY as bad as the initial insertion, somehow (okay, probably because my first one was also the clinician’s first one, do not recommend). It was pinchy and weird and completely okay within 3-4 hours.
I had a old fashioned IUD taken out; and the removal was considerably less painful than insertion.
ah, thank you both for the reassurance. not a huge fan of doctor’s visits myself (who is, though?), and it helps to have some moral support going in. sending good thoughts your way too, beachlass!
They can give you IV sedation. This is a thing to ask for if you have access to excellent health insurance. (It cost me something like 1500 5 years ago, all I had to pay was $90.) I was lucky–I didn’t think I could tolerate getting the mirena, but after one failed attempt my doc (ARNP) said, “hey let’s actually give you drugs.” IV sedation, so I had to have a friend drive me, but felt nothing, and only minor cramping.
It grates my cheese that the default is “shove it in without pain treatment.” It’s excellent bc (in my experience) and does not have to hurt!
Maybe that could still be a factor? It’s got hormones in it right? Anyway, wishing you all the best for your mammogram! Hope you’re feeling a bit better about it now.
Had a big ol’ lumpy cyst at 20, it was okay and just a cyst. All the luck and good vibes to you!
Thank you!!
What, no! Breasts are just lumpy, everything is fine!
It will all be fine.
🙂
My breasts are super lumpy and have been since I got them (so for over fifteen years now). They are fine. Good luck for your mammogram! Odds are things will be okay.
Thank you!!
My mom had two totally benign lumps in her 30s, and a friend of mine had one about a year and a half ago. Very scary, but totally fine.
I feel better every time someone replies with ‘benign’. Thank you <3
I have had an ultrasound specifically for a tremendously lumpy mass, and was told I just have “very dense breast tissue.” Sending benign vibes your way!!
“Very dense” – The more we talk about variable breast tissue, the more everything starts sounding like bread.
I had a scare about 10 years ago, but it turned out to be nothing. I still have them, and they get larger (and sore) right around my period, especially if I’ve been eating salty/greasy food.
Bodies are so weird.
MINE TOO.
I had lumps a few years ago and was seriously freaked out. I was too broke for a mamogram, but my ob gyn (who was really a midwife/nurse practitioner and wonderfully funny and practical) suggested I try giving up caffeine for a while because sometimes, in some women, caffeine can cause lumps. I did and they eventually went away. I still drink caffeine now, but I try to be a bit more careful about moderation. (Which is super hard because I’m in publishing.)
What if we could store caffeine in our bodies the way that camels store water? That wouldn’t be so bad.
🙂
Thank you!
Three cheers for midwives/nurse practitioners! I love the practice I am with, such a great way to get care.
I miss mine so much! I moved to a different state and there are no midwife nurse practitioners available. My current doctor is OK, but he’s not personable and he never asks any questions which I suppose is the norm, but man my old midwife spoiled me! I’m so glad you’ve got great care where you are! Awesome midwifes are awesome!
My NP said that she’s known as “the vagina fairy” around the practice, so there’s no way in hell I’m ever going to anyone else!!
It says a lot about my priorities that I went “yeah, breast lumps can be scary, I’m glad you had a calm midwife to talk to – YOU GAVE UP CAFFEINE!?!?”
It was Not Fun. I tried all those herbal teas that are supposedly just as good as caffeine. “Oh, try ginger tea! It will pick you right up and it’s so much better than coffee.” All lies.
Of course after a couple months I was able to go back on the good stuff and apparently I had lost my caffeine tolerance, which was awesome. I could drink one cup of coffee or tea and be set. (Of course I’ve built it back up now, but it was great while it lasted.)
I faintly remember the days before my caffeine dependency, when I couldn’t drink Mountain Dew because it gave me the shakes. That was a more innocent time.
beachlass, all will be well. I’m sure of it. I’m sorry you have to get through this scare first. ::Toasthugs::
When I was 20 I went to a doc about a breast lump. The doc found more breast lumps. Doc quizzed me about my caffeine intake. I was in college and seriously abusing caffeine. Cut out caffeine cold turkey (except for chocolate, which you can pry from my cold, dead hands), and it was a painful withdrawal.
Next menstrual cycle after quitting caffeine: no more lumps. They just … disappeared. As the doc predicted.
I have returned my favorite stimulant to my diet, but with limits. Still no lumps.
Astonished by how many folks have chimed in with caffeine/lumps stories. I just did not know that.
Ok, so serious question: are caffeine-related breast lumps in any way dangerous? Because if they’re not, I’m not sure lump-free breasts are worth the sacrifice. I’m not joking.
My doc said caffeine-related lumps were always benign. But they look the same as uncaffeinated lumps. Which can show up with or without caffeine. So lumps must be investigated, to be safe.
That’s why I quit caffeine. And that’s why now I keep my caffeine intake in the moderate range. I don’t want any lumps to wonder about.
I had this happen exactly a year ago. The two-week wait for the mammo and ultrasound was really horrible, but everything was fine. Many breasts are lumpy.
And FWIW, my doctor has a policy of sending everyone who says the feel a lump to be imaged. I think doctors are SUPER careful about this, so don’t read anything into the fact that she sent you for the mammogram. Glad they’re getting you in fast, too.
Sending good thoughts today.
Thank you. My doc is quick to refer as well, and I do appreciate that about her.
And this is why, though the odds are that it is something benign, if it isn’t, you are catching it early and will be able to treat it with a very good outcome.
Yep! My mom’s been getting regular mammograms for nearly two decades now, and for the first few years she’d have to get a biopsy of some shadow or lump every single time, until everyone agreed she just has particularly dense breasts.
It’s a thing! You’ll be fine!
I have a permanent lump in my right breast. I’ve talked to my doctor about it, she says we’re cool, it grows and shrinks as my hormone levels fluctuate, everything is fine.
I had a lumpectomy about ten years ago for a lump which grew SUPER FAST but was totally benign.
My mom has cystic breast tissue and had a biopsy in her late 30s– it was benign.
This has made me considerably less panicky about my own cystic breast tissue. I *have* had a doctor say, a few years ago, “I think you’re probably fine, but if you were my sister, I’d be pressing you to get a second opinion from someone who does more breast exams than I do.” I did get that second opinion. And the second opinion was, “Yeah, feels like a cyst. We can do more testing, but given your family history [there is breast cancer in my family, but non-aggressive varieties, and only significantly after menopause], I’d advise watching and waiting.”
Sending good thoughts your way.
Jumping on the “what, no! Breasts are just lumpy, everything is fine!” bandwagon.
I know how scary the idea can be–I was way too young for breast cancer to be a likely reason when I developed a lump when I was ~14, but I have a strong family history of it and I was so worried! I only have the one lump, but it grew pretty consistently (and was sometimes painful) for about 6 years, and I was always scared that even though I’d confirmed it was benign it somehow became cancerous. I got it checked a second time, about 4 years after my first check, just to reassure myself and, as expected, everything was still fine and I felt much better for knowing. Chances are very good that your lump will also be benign and you’ll get a sigh of relief very soon! Fingers crossed for you.
If it helps at all, my lump is a fibroadenoma (or as others have mentioned, a breast mouse) and it’s a really, really common condition afaik. One tip my doctor gave me for reassuring myself is that fibros can usually be moved around easily in the tissue with your fingers, where cancerous tissue is usually fixed in one spot, so maybe that can help reassure you.
Also, though this is not the likely or preferred option, I want to mention that if it IS cancerous, you will still be okay. It sounds like it’s just the one small lump, so even if it’s cancer it’d be an early stage and very treatable. I wouldn’t focus on that possibility right now, but in case it happens, know that you can get through it.
But again, most likely you’ll be coming back to tell us that you just have a friendly breast mouse as your new companion. Sending good thoughts your way in the meantime!
:hug: I first had a lump in my breast/underarm when I was in college, had an undiagnosed pain/fatigue issue, and was at the mercy of the truly awful Student “Health” Center–and it still turned out totally fine!
I did that! I really appreciated the doctor at the center saying “Oh absolutely you were right to come in – it’s a lump and you’ve never had one before!” I’m just so used to having doctor types imply that I shouldn’t have come in. (This is usually about thinking I’ve broken something when it’s a sprain. It made a cracking noise! It turned fuchsia! It hurt like the dickens! How was I supposed to know it wasn’t broken?)
My ex had a macrocalcification, which was discovered when she went to the ER with chest pains, which similarly weren’t what we thought those were about.
I have not that kind of story – I had a weird thing with my breasts, and wound up with a superfast mammogram and it was cancer. But I tell you this because after a shitty year and putting up with a lot of stories about how cancer would change my life for the better while cancer absolutely failed to do anything like that, everything is fine. IF there is a not benign thing (which is not the way to bet) it is likely intensely treatable.
Your doctor is taking you seriously, which is one of the key gateways to fine.
Fingers crossed that this is just a fire drill for you. I hope you are all done worrying by 4.
@beachlass, Great job on getting it checked out promptly. It is probably benign, and either way you’ve done a good thing for yourself by going to the doctor! I’m keeping my fingers crossed too!
@Elizabeth A., I have a loved one who got subjected to a lot of assumptions that cancer would be this spiritually uplifting experience and everyone around her would rush to her side and offer all the aid she could need, when that very much did not happen. In reality, cancer is just a shitty illness, like many other shitty illnesses in the world, that everyone experiences differently. I join you in flipping the bird to the “Don’t you just treasure every day now???” brigade.
I’m still disappointed I didn’t have any epiphanies, and it’s been almost three years. Where is my inspirational epiphany that pop culture promised me? All I got was a fake boob.
But yeah, I remember them saying that ~80% of biopsies (which is even a step BEYOND what beachlass is getting) turn out benign, so even more mammograms than that must turn out to be nothing because not all of those even lead to biopsies.
I had a lump around thus time last year. It was completely benign and hormonally related. My doc actually had the same issue after her first pregnancy. I told only my mom and Mr. Delperro beforehand, but when the negative report came back I felt like announcing it to everyone I saw.
Big hugs and best of luck.
I literally had two cysts drained in my boob last week! I also have a cyst in the other side that’s been there since I was like 18 which I’ve never had to do anything about.
It is absolutely true that most breast lumps are totally benign, but it’s a horrible wait to find out nonetheless. Sending good thoughts your way!
Several years ago, my doctor found a lump in my side boob region during my annual exam (me: “We’re supposed to check over there too?? That’s, like, my armpit. WAIT, YOU CAN GET PIT CANCER?”). After a very tense ultrasound, because I was young and my breasts were too dense for a mammogram, I was diagnosed with cartilege that decided to poke out from between my ribs a little extra. Breasts: even the sides are (innocuously) lumpy!
Another breasts are lumpy and everything is fine anecdote: I’m from a family of cystic breast-havers and, after years of mammograms and even lump aspirations (ew, ouch) among the lot of us, not one lump has ever been anything but benign (knock on wood!). Sometimes a lump is just a lump!
Rebecca Scherm is coming to a bookstore near me. Tomorrow! Oops! I technically have plans already but I could convince myself to reschedule pretty easily… Any SE MI toast folks going?
Thanks for the A++ Ham4Ham and for the opportunity to ask anyone who knows about Broadway: How long is the original cast likely to stoke around?
I’m going in April and it’s a huge deal involving grandparents coming out to watch the kids, my first trip away from them etc, and I’m so excited no matter what, but do want to gird myself if it’ll be a different adorable and talented cast than the original.
The general consensus as far as I know is that the original cast will likely be there through June.
Thanks!
Probably at least until after the Tony Awards in June, so you should get most if not all of the original cast. 🙂
That McKeon piece was lovely! I have also had a moment when I realized that the thing I most feared was a thing I should in fact welcome, and it’s such a wonderful thing to remember.
Agreed, so good!
Really great piece. I remember vividly, after my last breakup, a colleague saying to me “I know you feel so terrible now, but you will get through it because you are a [list of nice adjectives] woman”.
On the outside I was like, “oh, thank you so much, this means a lot”
And on the inside I was like “I am going to bank that compliment in case I ever feel sad again, but right now i feel l i g h t e r t h a n a i r.”
I am going through the breakup of a long-term relationship right now, and I both love the McKeon piece and feel like I’m probably not ready for it yet. It is clear to me that what I’m mourning isn’t the relationship as it was, but the relationship I was hoping might be possible on the other side of the difficulty we’d been having. Also, I’m mourning losing the good stuff, because there *was* good stuff. There just also was a lot of stuff that hurt– now-ex was growing in a direction that wasn’t a direction I could (or wanted to) grow in. And I was trying to keep us going by indexing my own life to now-ex’s, and that started to feel unacceptably self-hating to me.
Good luck. Sounds like you’re really clear on lots of things it’s helpful to be really clear on!
Aw, some solidarity from a fellow-Toastie-going-through-a-breakup. Every time I tell someone I’ve reached the point where I’m not randomly breaking into sobs in my bed, I INEVITABLY DO. But I hope you are doing well, and taking care of yourself, and that your heart is healing, however slowly that may be.
I’m interested in how the Real ID thing is going to play out, bc my state – MN – actually passed a state law against implementing Real ID. This isn’t just slow bureaucracy; we aren’t even trying to comply (the governor keeps saying “you guys, it’s time” but we are the only state as I understand it that has made no progress).
And I’m not sure how I feel about the topic, because all of the articles are super cursory like the one in the link roundup. What are the privacy concerns our legislators have or had? What standards does Real ID actually consist of? Who is for and against implementation? What does it cost the state and what is the evidence justifying that cost?
I’ve read like 4 articles without gaining any of that info. I’m sure I could dig deeper and find it, but I’m particularly grumpy this morning and even more irritated that all of the coverage looks like the same. Anyone have a useful link to learn more or just general insight?
You’re not the only state. I don’t know about the reasoning in each state, but from the Republican side it’s pandering to the tea party crowd by “resisting federal overreach” or something. See here: http://nemonews.net/2015/12/29/missouri-lt-govern…
The Real ID act also requires states to have proof of legal US residence before issuing a license, which is a problem for states like CA where undocumented immigrants can get driver’s licenses.
In terms of the ID itself basically it requires states to conform to newer security standards, including facial recognition and different types of scanning. In my state that means I had to take off my glasses and make a serious face in the photo.
It’s a bit longer, but the Congressional Research Service report on REAL ID covers the background and main issues. https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34430.pdf
It is Warren Limmer’s fault, and between this and his fighting tooth and nail against same-sex marriage three years ago, I hope he falls in a well.
That Ham4Ham just makes me want an all female cast version of the whole show.
Fancast: Queen Latifah is Washington, Missy Elliott is Lafayette/Jefferson
Lea Delaria is King George, Uzo Aduba is Angelica
Retta is Eliza. Cred: https://youtu.be/BOtbMkkXoq4
Rhetta is legit. And hilarious. I will watch her in whatever she wants to do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56OzqxGMr_U
I love that story so much, and I remember it every time I hear that Gloria.
I didn’t know she sang. This is the best.
My favorite thing about all this is that Lin-Manuel Miranda has gone on the record as saying he’d be “open” to a female Hamilton in future castings, which is like sure, great, dude, that sounds good, but he’s Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Hamilton cast is who they are, so they go ahead and do it, and are perfectly in character and sound amazing, and now the whole world knows that an all-female cast of revolutionaries would be awesome.
Takarazuka Revue performs Hamilton.
Lin’s stated in interviews that he’s totally cool with it!
I started antidepressants two weeks ago, and today was the first morning I forgot to take my pill so I have an accidental morb!
Put the pill bottle next to something you KNOW you won’t forget, like for me I put it next to my toothbrush, because I know I’m not gonna forget to brush my teeth because morning breath. Also, hope they’re working out well for you!
They are! Side effects have died down so the only outstanding issue is consequences on my sex life (which I am still feeling out). The medication really does help me just..not give a fuck.. About social interactions, screwing up at work, things that might go wrong in the future…it’s really refreshing.
not giving a fuck is great. i see things happening and can feel the anxiety starting to well up and then… nothing. it’s fucking amazing.
anyway…
i am an old fucking lady now and take so many pills a day that i have a 7-day pill case in my purse. if you’re not ready to go whole-hog, toss your bottle in your purse or get a little pill case to keep a cople extras with you.
Ugh. My partner takes ZERO pills and says I’m over-medicating. I tell him without my asthma, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, anti-inflammation, anti-depressant meds, I WOULD BE DEAD.
I use contact lens cases when I need to carry only a couple pills with me. Because I have 90000000 of those things from buying solution and I have no idea what else to do with them.
I have a few pills in a travel-size aspirin bottle that I keep at my desk. I don’t want anyone here seeing my prescription bottles of anything =/
I carry around a couple spares in my wallet in a pill case I bought at Claire’s. I think they called it a “breath mint carrier” because they didn’t want to look like they were supporting drug use.
I carry around a couple of spares in my wallet in a literal breath mint carrier – there are mini altoids that come in a very compact case that’s perfect. I mostly did this because I had it lying around, but hey, it works great.
Somehow my prescription for mine lapsed, and CVS has to get in touch with my doctor to renew it. Which means I took my last zoloft last Friday, and won’t have any more until this Friday. I don’t have the morbs so much as the spins.
Putin-The Perfume https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/w…
Smells like semiauthoritarianism!
This makes me want a line, like when OPI puts out one of its themed nail polish collections. Putin, Merkel, Berlusconi. . .
Berlusconi- Notes of self tanner over a base of cedarwood and baby oil
Merkel- Ask yourself, is such a frivolous purchase responsible? Nein
Cameron- Old leather, sea salt, and pork cavort through your nose.
I liked Unbecoming so much more than The Goldfinch which has some similar themes, and maybe you will too! The art and restoration stuff is very engaging and the main character isn’t so lovable but thank god, not an overprivileged self-loathing/justifying druggie.
UGH, late-teenage to adult Theo was the WORST. By the end I was like, why am I still reading this?
I quit reading about 80% into the book. I just couldn’t handle him anymore.
I read this over breakfast today. I’m only just now getting into comics culture, but this article seems like a good intro to some of the issues around appealing to women fans: http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2015/12/15/in-de…
You guys, a friend posted this on my facebook and it made me really sad but is also really good. I thought you might enjoy it too: http://www.scarymommy.com/black-child-friends/
Note: i have no children, and have no intention of having children, but I love the scary mommy blog anyway.
Thanks for sharing that. One of my white, female three-year-old’s best friends at school is a black, male four-year-old. They attend a small, private, progressive preschool, so it’s all kinds of safe space right now, but I’m definitely trying to find ways to talk to her about this as they’re creeping up on kindergarten.
so it’s like 15 degrees outside and my building just sent out an email letting us know that the heat’s not really going to be working today, and my office is an icebox at the best of times. I’m already wearing fingerless gloves, drinking tea, and have my space heater going full blast, and I’m freezing.
Those effing licenses…
My brother tried to get his in time to fly home for xmas. It got stolen by a postal carrier (a constant, huge problem for him). So he had to get special temp papers & take his passport to fly. Then they were supposed to mail him a new one. THAT one got stolen, too. So he went and begged them to just have it delivered to the license office so that he could go in-person to get it. Oh, they couldn’t possibly do THAT. So, in the end he had to spend even more money on a mailbox at a non-USPS shipping store and hopefully THIS time the license will arrive, un-stolen. Meanwhile, he spent a chunk of change for the license in the first place AND spent a ton of time talking to the license people and the postal inspector general about how his mail his stolen constantly.
Oof. Our mail keeps getting stolen also 🙁 – luckily I haven’t had to renew any documents that get delivered lately, but I can totally picture the runaround he must have had with that.
what the fuck is wrong with your brother’s post office
Did you read about the postal carrier who just “gave up” and started throwing away mail? Or the one who literally opened mail and stole gift cards out of the envelopes? http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/tale…
I had a terrible mail carrier at my old apartment (Queens, NY) that managed to bend or rip or damage nearly everything. That included Netflix DVDs :/ My new one is lightyears better and I never thought I’d be such an adult that I could appreciate a notable difference between two mail carriers, but ah, such is life.
It is seriously bad. A couple of years ago he had all of his birthday & xmas gifts stolen. They even stole the crappy old pair of pants my mom mailed to him because he’d forgotten them when he flew home. He reported it to the cops and the postal service, but we still all lost a ton of money that year.
ALWAYS RELEVANT. Good luck today. Oops this was supposed to be a reply to “the only googling I’m doing in re my medical issues is “cute animal GIFs”.”
Got the morbs” is wonderful and I will be using it henceforth.
Germaine Greer Drastically Shifts Stance, Says “Lopping Off Your Dick DoesMake You a Woman”
I remember finding a copy of The Whole Woman in a charity shop a few years ago, buying it and starting to have a flick through. I stopped, horrified, very quickly.
Yep. Bought it before knowing what was in it. Didn’t want it in my living space. Couldn’t in good conscience donate it. Have very strong feelings about not burning / shredding books. Contemplated collaging it in ways that critiqued its premises. Eventually outsourced problem to my mother, who shared my horror at the book but not my qualms about book destruction.
So, story time: It is definitely not that hard to get onto a plane without a license. I accidentally left my license in a cabin in Colorado this summer (though luckily I had already ordered a new license). When we flew out of Alburque, I just got there early. I have credit cards and had some mail in my purse, so they just gave it a thorough looking-at, went though my carry-on and patted me down, and I was on my way.
NB: I am a white woman, so that probably helped immensely, but if you have some form of picture ID on you (college ID, credit card with your pic on it, etc.) it’s probably easier.
Not to make a assumptions, but are you white? If you’re not white, are you visibly Muslim? This may not be universal.
Yes, I added that disclaimer!
Oh DC comics, is there no one who could point out the problems in saying <yelling in Pakistanian> to you? http://www.buzzfeed.com/imaansheikh/where-can-i-l…
Pakistania is the country just south of Latveria, duh
Um. Does this mean that that editor thinks that, living in America, they speak Americanian? Because boy-howdy, that is some grade school reasoning right there.
it’s really really baffling. If it had said, “Pakistani” I would’ve understood, which while not a language is at least how people refer to people from Pakistan. But yeah, I have no idea who thought up Pakistanian.
Maybe they got it confused with “Palestinian”? (Which is also not a language, but it’s the best I can come up with.) Alteratively, maybe they’re not very bright and/or not interested in stuff outside their own country.
the best (no actually worst) part is according to a Pakistani comics reader I saw on twitter, it was set in a relatively obscure part of Pakistan that he had never even heard of! How can you do the research, set it in a real place, and then say that??
by doing all your research in five seconds on Google Maps?
You know, there was definitely a time where I would’ve even taken THAT acknowledgement that my people, like, exist as a positive. I’m REALLY glad that time is over.
Apropos of nothing, I’m still having issues with Shockwave crashing on this site. I thought the redesign was supposed to fix that? Or was that me projecting my hopes and dreams onto the redesign?
Shockwave is crashing for me as well. But there are still way, way fewer issues than before the redesign (i.e., I haven’t had to take drastic steps to still use Chrome while viewing the Toast).
I’m also having shockwave crash issues.
Same here – I was hoping it was one of the other tabs I had open, but nope.
Someone I know on Facebook: “Kylo Ren is easily the best character in the movie (followed closely by Finn), and I will fight anybody who refutes that”.
I think we may have been watching very different films.
Sooooo… Rumble in the parking lot later? (I’m on your team).
Fortunately, all the people who (correctly) prefer Rey can probably defeat him in single combat, on account of the Force being stronger with them.
How is Kylo Ren better than Finn? Ren was good, but Finn was awesome. (I can’t choose between Rey and Finn. Both were wonderful)
When I walked out of watching TFA last Saturday, I made a comment to my friends about how ~Kyle Ron~ needed to grow tf up from his angsty teen self. My friend then informed me that he’s supposed to be in his 30s in this movie. He is an actual manchild. Grown infantile men do not great characters make. I will actively argue with anyone that refutes this!!!
There are some interesting parallels IMO between Kylo and young Anakin Skywalker–talented but broody man-children whose stubborn resentments get stoked by older manipulative “mentors.” The Dark Side is the MRA movement of the galaxy.
RED LIGHTSABER = RED PILL
It all makes sense now.
But they do make great villains, which is why I loved the choices they made with his character (if not the character himself)
For, like, laughing-at purposes, sure!!!
I mean, Kylo Ren is “great” as in “fascinating to examine, like a bug in a jar,” so for that reason I can imagine him being someone’s favorite. Dissecting his gordian knot of emotions is very entertaining.
So I started carrying my passport card as secondary ID when I lived in AZ, because I have a Spanish last name. I kept on doing it when I moved to CA, out of sheer habit. Looks like I’m gonna need it again. Plus ca change…
When I first moved to LA, I had a Vermont license back in the days when their licenses didn’t have pictures, so I always carried my passport for picture ID, and I still do, 31 years later, just in case. (Just in case I have an uncontrollable impulse to flee the country, with no time to stop at home on the way to the airport. You just never know….)
I can’t believe no one in Crimson Peak said they had the woefuls. (I just watched it the other day.)
They were too morbs to mention it out loud.
I don’t know if the Victorians had a name for what I’ve got, maybe the screams? Because my house was broken into last night.
I asked my ex-Marine sweetie if I ought to go to Big5 and buy a gun (not the first time I’ve considered this) and he said “you know if someone breaks in and enters our house, the gun they have won’t be from Big 5, right?”
YES THANK YOU I FEEL A LOT BETTER NOW
🙁 I”m so sorry that happened to you, what a horrible awful unsafe feeling. I hope you guys are able to find some security measures that work for you.
I’m so sorry that happened, but wait, what was his point?
Oh just that gun control legislation doesn’t affect criminals’ access to guns. He takes any opportunity to reminds me.
But… you were saying that you wanted to buy a gun. Why would he take THAT as the right opportunity to badmouth gun control legislation to you?
As in, they only sell long-barreled hunting guns? And those aren’t serious enough? I don’t get it, because a shotgun will mess a body up, duck or human.
Also, glad you’re ok!
Yeah, I think at least 80 percent of the point of a shotgun is to stand there with it and look intimidating.
The other 20% comes with the SHUCK-SHUCK sound it makes when you rack the slide.
Yep. That’s always been my understanding of the main point of having a shotgun for protection. Ideally they’re intimidating enough that you’d never have to actually shoot.
This is from December, but it is a rebuttal of Chief Justice Robert’s questions during Fisher vs University of Texas, by an awesome Black woman astrophysicist, which I consider Relevant To Our Interests.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/opinion/the-ben…
So… the ID issued to me by the state in which I live might not be considered valid by the federal government even to travel within that same state? Hmm. HMMM.
-I really love those posts from Shirashi. “Guys, I was the best today! Holy crap, being the best is awesome! Yaaaaaaaaaaay!” Just a teenage girl, acknowledging her own power, neither bragging nor hiding her skills under a layer of false modesty. Just “hey, I did an awesome thing, and I’m really excited about the awesome thing that I did, I totally recommend doing awesome things.”
-I eagerly await the inclusion of this buggin’ Victorian street slang in future blog entries from Corset Lady.
Oh shit guys Obama’s on TV coming for our guns! He’s finally doing it!
By which I of course mean he’s hiring extra people to process background checks not actually doing anything.
Not according to the NRA/Republican candidates/pretty much every news station, drumming this up as “President Obama is pushing the limits of executive action — coming up next, how this affects your gun rights!” (what I actually heard this morning)
It’s so sad to me that executive action is required even for something so simple, because the Republicans are so dug in on the “any law that even hints at doing anything about guns is THE DEVIL”. Just so, so sad that it’s gotten to this point where people we elected are putting their continued revenue stream from the NRA over safety.
It fucking kills me. One of the few realities I really can’t deal with or think about long before running to escapist fiction.
Agreed 100%. It’s something I can’t even really talk about with other people even if they agree with me because it goes beyond “let’s vent about this together” and straight into “I can’t believe this is a thing that really happens” territory, and it always leaves me more upset than I was to begin with. Blergh.
On a slightly more positive note, I went to whitehouse.gov and caught the last half of Obama’s address, and it was actually…kinda soothing to me. He was saying all the reasonable and empathetic things which are so self-evident, and I know how it’s going to be spun and disregarded by opponents, but it was still just really nice to hear from the POTUS. I’m going to listen to it again, later today, when the video is up.
I read the recap on NPR but I’ll try and watch it when I get home! I’m all up for being kinda soothed.
The thing is (and it’s also a bit of a bummer to consider), I don’t want to take for granted the POTUS being such a reasonable, empathetic person. I came of age in the Bush years. Obama is flawed, but I’m still pretty well convinced he’s going to be the best president in my lifetime, and he has less than a year left.
ETA: Actually, it’s a really good speech, maybe one of my favorites by him. He admits frankly at the end that the change he wants, to stop mass shootings, isn’t going to happen with this Congress or during his presidency — “but a lot of worthwhile things don’t happen overnight,” and he namechecks women’s right to vote, the Civil Rights Act, LGBT rights.
I also thought it was a lovely speech but the underlying message of “Why do we even need to have this conversation? It should be so logical that things are broken, and I’m just going to keep saying reasonable things in a reasonable way even though I know damn well lots of people won’t hear me” made me sad.
Yes, the reality behind that question is very sad.
Ok, just quickly venting without much commentary, but I was at a party the other day with a guy who emphasized that he not only was for open carry (and I think had a job focused on working toward that), but was for unlicensed open carry. Another man at this same party talked about his issues with the new Star Wars based on how good the woman character (haven’t seen it, sorry for not having the name) was at everyone and how it was clearly pandering to SJWs and he was sure there was gonna be a backlash to how much culture is pandering to the SJWs. Also, made a point of saying a few times he was a feminist.
I surround myself almost exclusively with smart women and as such only hear these kinds of stories third hand as like weird shit other people have to deal with at parties, so was taken aback to find myself in this position myself. It was a nice reminder of why I should stay in my bubble.
How good she was at everything* not everyone cause that makes less sense.
Also this says there are 17 (now 18) replies, but I only see 10. So I’m guessing that there are 7 comments in moderation which are just pants shittingly angry at Obama.
Lol, I actually suspect that the other seven are in my diverted thread, which showed up as a top-level comment below.
Oh wait hold the phone: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is making clear that it doesn’t matter where you conduct your business—from a store, at gun shows, or over the Internet: If you’re in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks.”
Can they do that? force background checks at gunshows? because that’s actually a pretty big step forward.
ooh also:
“The Administration is proposing a new $500 million investment to increase access to mental health care.”
This has nothing to do with gun control per se and it’s annoying that “we have to fund mental health cause the mentally ill are murderers don’cha know” but still, yay funding for mental health.
Yes indeed, he’s closing the gun show loophole. I thought you knew all this when you said before he’s “not actually doing anything.” 🙂
And yeah, he also mentioned in the speech how the mentally ill are not really responsible for the frequent mass shootings, but he specifically called out those Congress members who refuse to take other action because “we need to offer better mental health care first,” saying look, here’s your chance to support this.
The TV wasn’t that loud in a crowded break room… I didn’t actually catch the whole speech and even then only some of what he said
Just signed up for following The Toast on “This” and was totally unprepared for all the other super cool choices to be had…so many good sites, stories and articles, my wee brain went “pooooooooof” with overload.
I love Rem! I am in mourning for Rembert Explains.
(supposed to be a response to Onymous)
It’s such minor action, and I’m getting so enraged/distraught when I catch news reports (even small local news channels) basically helping out the NRA with inflammatory lead-ins like “President Obama pushing the limits of executive power with new gun laws — up next, how this affects your gun rights.” Plus the headlines about how gun sales break YET ANOTHER record with these announcements. WHEEEE GUNS EVERYWHERE.
There’ve been a couple incidents where some dude was knocking on my door at midnight, without saying anything, but for a few minutes at least. When my step-dad found out (he used to be a cop, defense attorney, and state prosecuter), he strongly advised me to call the police next time it happened and gave me a range of self-defense options, including buying a firearm that he’d help train me on. I said no, I wasn’t interested in that.
I understand why others might want one, but personally, I wouldn’t feel safe with a gun in my small apartment. Guns exist to kill people. Once you get a gun, you’re going to start imagining (or looking for) the scenarios in which you might use it. I don’t want that kind of ideation, but more importantly, I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want to kill someone just because I was scared. I don’t want to take someone’s life or ruin my own that way. And there are other tools to disable people without such a certainty of killing them.
The other thing about having a gun in your apartment is that it’s a target for thieves and/or could be used against you. Basically, whenever you see a sign on a house proclaiming that the resident is a gun owner, it’s a signal to burglars not that the owner is necessarily home and easily able to reach their weapon, but that there is probably something in the house that is probably easy to find and take (yeah, some people have gun safes, but not everyone), easily concealable (not the case with, say, a flat-screen TV), and has a high fence value. I had my house broken into once, and the thief or thieves, who went through the house as fast as they could, went right by my then-wife’s laptop–according to the investigating officer, they were almost certainly looking only for guns, cash, and/or booze.
Oof, that’s an excellent point too. A good rejoinder for those who brag about their gun-owner signs.
I also don’t want to own a highly lethal weapon that can easily be used against me, or a child, even after my death (or its theft). I don’t want to put another firearm into circulation.
Back to my Magneto fantasies of bundling up all the guns in the world, sticking them in a rocket, and firing them into the sun. Let’s get back to killing one another with bows and arrows.
Urgh. Someone broke into my neighbor’s house a few years ago and the only thing taken was a gun. The reason (*a* reason, anyway) criminals have guns is because some gun owners are irresponsible jerks who don’t keep their guns secure.
I have hornet spray in strategic places, but especially by my bed. I figure if someone gets to my bedroom, they mean serious business, and I don’t want my doofus dogs getting killed. I’ve actually practiced rolling them both into the top blanket and grabbing the spray.
The advantage of hornet spray is that it shoots at least ten feet, well beyond the reach of a bad person.
My favorite great-aunt used it on someone trying to get into her front door–she leaned out the side window and sprayed the person more or less in the face. It did the job, police showed up, done.
That’s great! I actually am going to get some pepper spray soon, and I’ll probably keep it by my bed. My apartment does feel awfully vulnerable in a way my old one didn’t (I miss having more than one lock on my front door, especially a deadbolt that didn’t even have a keyhole on the outside).
i love the image of you rolling up your doofus dogs in a blanket before spraying the intruder.
That’s brilliant.
Massively agreed. I keep a hammer by the front door of my apartment and a large knife by the bed (concealed, but where I can easily get it). I also bring my bike in from the hallway and park it across the door, so whoever opens it will send that thing crashing and alert me.
Also, I start Krav Maga on Thursday.
Go you!
This is why I bought a stun gun last week. I’d been thinking about wanting a gun for a while, mostly for the intimidation factor and because I just hate the idea of ever being a hopeless victim in my own home. But it takes time and work to get to know guns well enough to be a responsible owner and, also, I’ve just been so increasingly disheartened by the state of gun culture in this country that I don’t want to be part of the problem. I’m not against the idea of people owning guns, but I’m strongly against a culture that villifies a push toward more responsible gun ownership as a violation of an individual’s rights while ignoring the rights of the individuals whose lives are ruined by guns.
Yes, very well said! After I told my step-dad I wasn’t interested in owning a gun, he agreed that that was a wise choice, because of all the training it takes to become a responsible owner and handler of a firearm, and most people don’t go through it.
It’s true there is a real intimidation factor if you can face an intruder with a barrel — but if they disarm you and get your gun, all that power is now against you. No gun is ever on your side.
Also, if you have a weapon, you need to be prepared to use it. Otherwise, it’s no use (and potentially a threat to you). I know I wouldn’t be (not that guns are a legal option here, but I wouldn’t be prepared to use lethal force with any weapon), so there would be no point in my arming myself.
Exactly — another reason I don’t want one. If I’m in a real life-or-death situation, I can more easily stomach the idea of stabbing or beating someone to death. I don’t want to do it with an accidental pull of the trigger.
Follow-up on the Oregon militia situation:
It’s so funny, moving from Texas to Oregon, I had this mentality of “yesss finally I will live in a PROGRESSIVE REGION.”
But of course I work in a rural small town, so when the state newspaper publishes a headline about the situation that includes the words “Victims or Villains?” and that newspaper gets left in the lunchroom, someone’s going to come along and forcefully underline the “Victims” option.
And I read the intro to the article, which was ridiculously biased, painting Hammond Sr. as a generous community man who, so sad, wouldn’t be around anymore since he was headed back to prison.
Fortunately I have a few coworker friends my own age and of like mind, but I’m also very glad to have The Toast too.
Have there been any new announcements about the toastbags? I wasn’t online much around the holidays and I’m not sure if I missed something.
Nicole hadn’t yet unpacked them as of last week, I think, but hopefully New Year vigor (and business bottom-line motivation) will bring them out soon!
I had a cool thing happen yesterday: I sent a help-me-out email to this listserv I’m on, asking about ways to keep relatively sane and relatively unbroke during the insanely short “mat leave” I’m planning (hello, freelance life! How little you support women/moms!) and you know who wrote back with advice?
BEAR.
Of ASK BEAR fame.
I got personalized advice from Bear himself! I went into a fugue state of squee.
I have one thing to say to the girlfriend of Mr. “I-can-call-people-hateful-slurs-because-I’ve-declared-that-I’m-Tolerant” from today’s Dear Prudence, and that is:
DTMFA.
Because you have better, more glorious things to do with your days than hold that spoiled man’s hand to try to lead him into the realm of not being an asshole. Things like washing your hair, taking a nap, and playing your own video games.
Agreed! That is not a fixable bad habit, it’s a window into his psyche and the spite that will be turned on her like a firehose when they break up.
completely puny and irrelevant but it’s driving me crazy and i need to vent:
my trusty old computer monitor (which i had been using for OVER FIVE YEARS) died on Sunday and when i got back in to work this morning it had been replaced with a GIGANTIC new monitor – like the old one was 8″ tall by 14″ wide or something, the new one is a 14″x14″ square and I can’t get used to it. it’s like an assault on my eyes.
i’ve tried changing the display settings and i honestly think it’s simply Too Big for how close I have to sit (about a foot from my eyes to the screen – my reception desk is not built with a computer in mind), but who the hell actually wants a smaller monitor??? me. i do.
also I have to do CTRL+- on EVERY website today because the typefaces are SO HUGE it’s uncomfortable to read. i mean, it’s been like that ages – everyone is optimizing for those 4k screens or something idek but I had already zoomed out and still had to do it AGAIN.
it’s the worst. (i am a baby)
(also, I still can’t tell if the I’s are capitalized or not in this font and it’s driving me crazy when i can’t remember if i decided to make a stylized choice to not use capitals in a particular comment or not)
well, that ought to be a somewhat easy fix. You should be able to calibrate your monitor, either through the start menu or through buttons on the monitor itself, and one of the settings you can change is the default resolution.
The trouble is that I DID that 🙁 It was the very first thing I did, because the screen was set to something really absurd to start with, and the contrast/brightness was all off.
I also set my default browser fontsize to 10pt or something absurdly small, and many webpages respect that. But there are still some that are HUGE and then on this monitor, even bigger!
Also I just got asked to proof the website for work which goes live next week and I had to zoom out four times to get it to a comfortable size, on top of it’s pure black-on-white, it’s been giving me an awful headache to read. But I’m pretty sure that it would not go over well if I said anything to the designers about needing to respect the browser’s set font size or using shades of grey. (Which is a problem for me even on my old monitor.) (And is such a fad in web design right now and it’s awful.) (Also, not really a dig on our designers – I know this is what’s fashionable in web design right now, and it is MUCH better than the old thing we had, I’m just a baby who really loathes the minimal black and white look.)
In late, but speaking as a design nerd, I think they might appreciate it! We talk a lot about what *we* think about usability/accessibility, but it’s not always easy to figure what other people need us to do to improve. It might be really helpful for them to get some concrete feedback about design issues that are getting in your way.
you have my sympathies. i went from one regular ol’ flat screen monitor to TWO hi-def wide screen monitors. AAAAHHHHH!!! MY EYES!!! IT’S GOING TO EAT MY FACE!!!
i twiddled a lot of buttons and fiddled a lot of settings and slightly rearranged my desk, plus generally got used to having a display that extends to the limits of my peripheral vision, and now it’s OK. it took some getting used to for sure. hang in there!
I gave myself a pep-talk this morning on my way in. “Surely you were just sensitive yesterday because of the PMDD-orneriness and it’ll be FINE tomorrow” and I sat down about fifteen minutes ago telling myself that it’s fine, but honestly I’m already developing a headache and I literally can’t make the resolution any smaller or anything. It’s just SO BIG and only a foot from my face! (Literally: the distance between my eyes and the screen is less than the size of the screen’s top edge to bottom edge. I… I think that’s a problem, but I can’t move further away because this desk wasn’t designed for a computer and there’s only one spot to sit that can also reach a keyboard.)
So sad: a temporary monitor that I used on Sunday was also bigger and higher def than my ca.2008 monitor but it was shorter/better calibrated than this one and I got used to it really fast. I think I’m going to have to ask ITS to swap it.
ok, mine never gave me a headache. headaches are no bueno 🙁
Yup 🙁
I tried resetting the cleartype to get rid of the halos on text, and reduced the brightness/contrast dramatically, which has helped some. (White bgs are distinctly grey now!)
BUT LUCKILY in between these comments, someone who was here on Monday during the swap came by and agreed that the monitor is probably too big, and we’ll borrow an unused one and see if it’s better. This one sticks up a good 3 inches over the top of my desk, and we had just been talking about going for a minimalist look where everything is flush with the desktop, so there we go.
(I was a little afraid to complain, tbh. I’m really glad that there’s a non-headache reason to get rid of it!)
Here’s another feature story on Shiraishi that has some nice pics, although there’s an occasional bit of weirdness: “The door to the Shiraishis’ Chelsea loft opens into what appears to be a playroom for a toddler: mini-trampoline, trapeze, beach balls, cubbies, kid paintings, tiny desk, doll’s bed — all surrounded by a 2-foot-high wooden fence.” Do toddlers play on mini-trampolines? (I’m almost afraid to check YouTube.)
my toddler is insane for trampolines.
I posted this in reply to a comment in the link roundup yesterday but considering that the ham4ham is featured again, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that LMM changed his twitter icon to this wonderful fanart of Morgan Marcell killing it as AHam: https://twitter.com/kayleerowena/status/683808876…
BLESS HIM. I love his current Twitter banner, too (of the backs of his and Obama’s heads as they face the whole grinning cast and crew).
Greg Kinnear as Joe Biden!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS. Is exactly how I feel. And if someone I halfway like disagrees I feel like part of me dies.
If I had a hard copy of Queen of the Night, I would happily pass it along. But alas. I only have a digital galley that is not share-able. It is, however, worthy of the hype. I kept tweeting tweets of pleasure as I read it.
Oh, it definitely is. I spent a day looking it up to make sure I could get on the plane. The TSA's policy is "Shit happens! Just have some means of showing us who you are. Also you'll get a pat down." The whole Real ID mess is really from the DHS not the TSA. The TSA is perfectly happy to let you fly as long as you have some means of proving you're the name on the ticket.
1: woooow. fuck that guy.
2. Actually, US citizens with Spanish-language names are among the most vulnerable to identity theft. That guy, was, like, triply wrong.
3: the next time you renew, you should TOTALLY get a passport card. It just fits in your wallet–it's one less thing to worry keep track of and it has all the same info as your booklet.